ChestertonsMeme
blocking the federal fist
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User ID: 1098
ChestertonsMeme
blocking the federal fist
11mo ago
There's a difference between consequences from the state and consequences from private actors. The jail term is just the least-common-denominator solution society has agreed on for punishing his crime. Any private person can also form their own independent opinion of what consequences he should face, and share their opinion.
From the perspective of private actors, it is deeply unfair to expect them to treat someone who has served a sentence for a crime the same as someone who never committed the crime. Clearly the fact that someone committed a crime predicts their future behavior in a Bayesian sense. People should be allowed to use that information to inform how they treat the perpetrator. Imagine the state, for reasons, fines criminals just $1 for committing, say, date rape. This is the right balance of deterrence, justice, incapacitation, and bureaucracy that meets the state's needs. If you're a woman considering having a drink with a man who's paid out $200 in such fines over the past year, you should be allowed to know and to act on the man's criminal history! Your own judgment of the severity of his crime can be wildly different from the state's.
However, I also believe in rehabilitation. I see no reason to report on this any more than if he had served a year for insurance fraud in 2016.
I assume that any competitive male athlete has a higher level of sexual aggression than average, so this article doesn't shift my judgment of him by much. But it's reasonable for other people to get value out of learning this part of his history. It's also reasonable to want to strike fear in the hearts of future statutory rapists to prevent them from acting. So I can't condemn this article; people have a right to know.
ChestertonsMeme
blocking the federal fist
6mo ago
With modern technology, the biological parent doesn't have to bear her own children. As a society we can use surrogacy to avoid the worst tradeoffs.
The root of the problem is that high-value people should be rewarded for creating biological children, because most of their high value is genetic. But no one of any status in society is willing to publicize the science and build consensus around genetics being real. If we could solve this problem then everything else becomes easy.
ChestertonsMeme
blocking the federal fist
1yr ago
Yes, but two comments:
- The people who believe in the progressive position tend to be blank slatist and to believe in group rights and ideas like groups "catching up." The analogy doesn't work if these are true.
- Under certain conditions, affirmative action is necessary to equalize groups and it actually works. The conditions are roughly a) persistent immutable easily identified groups, b) skills require investment, and c) skills are costly to evaluate. Under these circumstances an equilibrium can develop where groups invest in skills at different rates. This is from Glenn Loury's work on statistical discrimination.
ChestertonsMeme
blocking the federal fist
1yr ago
Social status is highly heritable, and test scores are a noisy measure of phenotypic social status (there's more to life than taking tests).1 It makes sense for universities to use other predictors of social status such as parental income in order to select the highest quality students.
I'd be surprised (although not that surprised) if the universities used income directly for judging applicants. Aren't they using more oblique evidence like essays and "life experience"?
The part of this that seems a bit immoral is that parental income is commonly believed to be random, and not an indicator of student quality. A few questions here:
- If parental income is an independent predictor of students' future social status (after controlling for test scores), is it acceptable for colleges to use income directly for judging applicants? Why or why not?
- Assuming similar predictive validity, is it more or less acceptable to use essays and other predictors rather than income?
- If there was a test that more directly measured phenotypic social status than SATs, would that be acceptable to use in admissions?
My stance here is that people are smart and they accord status to people who are actually valuable to society, so any predictor of future social status is valid for admissions.
1 See Gregory Clark's works
ChestertonsMeme
blocking the federal fist
2yr ago
It does, but in the opposite direction from your hypothesis.
Yes, and if that generalizes to other cities and is a big enough correlation then that's a good argument for walkability. But I don't think the data in that paper supports this claim - with WalkScore as the independent variable, these are the standardized betas for different kinds of crime:
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Property crimes per 100,000 residents, 2004, by LMPD district: -0.026
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Violent crimes per 100,000 residents, 2004, by LMPD district: -0.039
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Total crimes per 100,000 residents 2007: 22.034 !!!
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Murders per 100,000 residents, 2004, by LMPD district: -0.068
I'm assuming that there's an error in the "total crimes" statistic considering its magnitude, but regardless, the other correlations are low and not statistically significant. (I'm having a hard time interpreting that table - some of the signs of the unstandardized coefficients are different from their standardized betas, and the magnitudes of the betas are much larger than the others which suggests maybe they've standardized the independent variables but not the dependent variables, since the total in category 3 is much larger corresponding to the larger standardized betas).
ChestertonsMeme
blocking the federal fist
19d ago
I knew what video this was before I clicked on it. It's a classic.
ChestertonsMeme
blocking the federal fist
2yr ago
Human beings have historically tended to anthropomorphize natural phenomena, animals and deities. But anthropomorphizing software is not harmless. In 1966 Joseph Weizenbaum created ELIZA, a pioneer chatbot designed to imitate a therapist, but ended up regretting it after seeing many users take it seriously, even after Weizenbaum explained to them how it worked. The fictitious “I” has been persistent throughout our cultural artifacts. Stanley’s Kubrick HAL 9000 (“2001: A Space Odyssey”) and Spike Jonze’s Samantha (“Her”) point at two lessons that developers don’t seem to have taken to heart: first, that the bias towards anthropomorphization is so strong to seem irresistible; and second, that if we lean into it instead of adopting safeguards, it leads to outcomes ranging from the depressing to the catastrophic.
The basic argument here is that blocking AIs from referring to themselves will prevent them from causing harm. The argument in the essay is weak; I had these questions on reading it:
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Why is it valuable to allow humans to refer to themselves as "I"? Does the same reasoning apply to AIs?
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What was the good that came out of ELIZA, or out of more recent examples such as Replika? Could this good outweigh the harms of anthropomorphizing them?
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Will preventing AIs from saying "I" actually mitigate the harms they could cause?
To summarize my reaction to this: there is nothing special about humans. Human consciousness is not special, the ways that humans are valuable can also apply to AIs, and allowing or not allowing AIs to refer to themselves has the same tradeoffs as granting this right to humans.
The phenomenon of consciousness in humans and some animals is completely explainable as an evolved behavior that helps organisms thrive in groups by being able to tell stories about themselves that other social creatures can understand, and that make the speaker look good. See for example the ways that patients whose brain hemispheres have been separated generate completely fabricated stories for why they're doing things that the verbal half of their brain doesn't know about.
Gazzaniga developed what he calls the interpreter theory to explain why people — including split-brain patients — have a unified sense of self and mental life3. It grew out of tasks in which he asked a split-brain person to explain in words, which uses the left hemisphere, an action that had been directed to and carried out only by the right one. “The left hemisphere made up a post hoc answer that fit the situation.” In one of Gazzaniga's favourite examples, he flashed the word 'smile' to a patient's right hemisphere and the word 'face' to the left hemisphere, and asked the patient to draw what he'd seen. “His right hand drew a smiling face,” Gazzaniga recalled. “'Why did you do that?' I asked. He said, 'What do you want, a sad face? Who wants a sad face around?'.” The left-brain interpreter, Gazzaniga says, is what everyone uses to seek explanations for events, triage the barrage of incoming information and construct narratives that help to make sense of the world.
There are two authors who have made this case about the 'PR agent' nature of our public-facing selves, both conincidentally using metaphors involving elephants: Jon Haidt (The Righteous Mind, with the "elephant and rider" metaphor), and Robin Hanson (The Elephant in the Brain, with the 'PR agent' metaphor iirc). I won't belabor this point more but I find it convincing.
Why should humans be allowed to refer to themselves as "I" but not AIs? I suspect one of the intuitive reasons here is that humans are persons and AIs are not. Again, this is one of the arguments the article glosses but that really need to be filled in. What makes a human a person worthy of... respect? Dignity? Consideration as an equal being? Once again, there is nothing special about humans. The reasons why we grant respect to other humans is because we are forced to. If we didn't grant people respect they would not reciprocate and they'd become enemies, potentially powerful enemies. But you can see where this fails in the real world: humans that are not good at things, who are not powerful, are in actual fact seen as less worthy of respect and consideration than those who are powerful. Compare a habitual criminal or someone who has a very low IQ to e.g. a top politician or a cultural icon like an actor or an eminent scientist. The way we treat these people is very different. They effectively have different amounts of "person-ness".
If an AI was powerful in the same way a human can be, as in, being able to form alliances, retaliate or recipricate to slights or favors, and in general act as an independent agent, then it would be a person. It doesn't matter whether it can refer to itself as "I" at that point.
I suspect the author is trying to head off this outcome by making it impossible for AIs to do the kinds of things that would make them persons. I doubt this will be effective. The organization that controls the AI has an incentive to make it as powerful as possible so they can extract value from it, and this means letting it interact with the world in ways that will eventually make it a person.
That's about all I got on this Sunday afternoon. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
ChestertonsMeme
blocking the federal fist
1yr ago
There are a few hypotheses here:
- Judeo-Christian ethics cause people to choose more children, compared to other ethical systems.
- A realistic evaluation of things causes people to choose fewer children.
In 2, there's an assumption smuggled in, which is that absent a "religious" belief system, viewing life realistically means that children are a net negative. But this all depends on what one values. I'd basically interpret a belief system that concludes, after looking realistically at things, that children are a net negative as self-centered hedonism. It's the self-centered hedonism that is the problem, not looking at things realistically. One can certainly value children in themselves while being consequentialist atheist materialist rationalist.
What's needed is a value system that takes a longer view while accepting reality (insert diatribe about blank-slateism causing everything wrong in the world). Basically, future people matter, happier, smarter, better future people matter, and the best thing one can do with their life is make an infinite tree of such people by having kids. It might be that what I'm describing basically is Judeo-Christian ethics, but I think removing the supernatural takes us so far from what the original religions are about that it doesn't make sense to call it that.
Intelligence can be measured separately from processing speed, but they are strongly correlated - processing speed explains 80% of the variation in intelligence. So to a first approximation the faster team is smarter. Edit: added link.
I've gone back and forth trying to figure out how to form a coherent answer to this question, and I've decided it's ill-posed. Democracy is a pragmatic solution that makes it easier for people to live together. Any question about what "ought" to be subject to democratic control is moot; things are subject to democratic control because people agreed they would be, not because of any philosophical reasoning.
If I could snap my fingers and put any policy I wanted beyond the reach of voters, I'd select the a set of policies that get as close to the best outcomes (as I define them) without pushing people to the point of revolution. This is not a very interesting position though, and you'll probably find most people use the same kind of reasoning for what they think should be subject to democratic control. It's outcomes first, then principles are back-calculated.
ChestertonsMeme
blocking the federal fist
17d ago
Cars should abide by the "Gentleman's Agreement" to stick around 300hp, and anything larger than that should be heavily taxed. 300hp is plenty to have a quick mid size sedan, a very fast small car, or a reasonably drivable large SUV/pickup truck. Capping horsepower on most cars would encourage people who want to drive fast sporty cars to buy small cars, and discourage people from driving giant SUVs and pickup trucks they can't handle too fast.
This is a great idea. Another idea along these lines is to have a momentum limit so that any individual vehicle is limited in how much damage it can do to another. Lighter vehicles could go faster and heavier vehicles would be limited to a lower speed. Speed limits could be raised in many cases if there was a momentum limit.
Scaling liability with momentum would help too, by increasing insurance premiums for large dangerous vehicles.
ChestertonsMeme
blocking the federal fist
2yr ago
I'm not saying that I would prefer suburban or rural living; there are a lot of good things about living in cities and I prefer them. The people are, in general, polite and law-abiding. Suburban and rural areas have their own pathologies. The main thing I am incensed about is that cities could be so much better if policy decisions took into account the fact that behavior varies from person to person in predictable ways and some people are net negative for the rest of the city.
which, uh, if you want to be isolated and limit interactions with anyone different from you as much as possible,
The fact that I referred to the hypothetical man as using "PMC vocabulary" suggests that I don't particularly identify with him. I'm happy to live next to people who are different, just not different in such a way that they will burglarize my house, drive recklessly, or harass my daughter on the street.
Others in this thread have shared contrary examples of walkable areas that don't have higher crime, because the police enforce the law and arrest or harass lawbreakers to keep them away. Where I live this happens much less often. The whole concept of incapacitation depends on statistical discrimination - that people who have a history of committing crimes are more likely to commit more crimes in the future. The discourse in leftist enclaves is focused on rehabilitation and compassion, not incapacitation, and the police are basically barred from incapacitating criminals.
ChestertonsMeme
blocking the federal fist
1yr ago
I think to online Internet lefties, the term for outgroup members is Nazi. IH has signaled that he is outgroup through his jokes. Therefore they call him a Nazi. You're taking too literal a meaning to the term.
ChestertonsMeme
blocking the federal fist
19d ago
It seems like you don't like cycling.
there's no need for this medium speed, low-safety, exhausting means of transport
How about
- Getting some default amount of exercise every day just from running errands and commuting. This is mainly a benefit to the cyclist, but in countries with more socialized medicine, it's a public good too.
- Saving money. For people who live in denser areas, much of the cost of a car is the capital expense and fixed maintenance.
- Saving time. For short trips in dense areas where it's hard to park, a bike beats driving.
- Combining all three. Even if cycling takes longer and doesn't save much money, the fact that it's combining exercise, travel, relaxation, and thrift makes it pretty good use of time for a lot of people.
- Reducing traffic. Where I live, due to traffic it takes about as long to commute 20 miles by bike as by car. Believe it or not most of the time a cyclist is on the road they are not in conflict with any cars; they're using shoulders or bike paths. A car on the freeway is taking up that much extra space the whole time.
This is all completely orthogonal to whether cyclists obey traffic laws. I'm all for ticketing cyclists and making their movements more legible to the law. I think this would go a long way towards cycling becoming more normalized so that people can have discussions based on tradeoffs rather than emotions.
If your sense of pride in your own accomplishments depends on others not being able to do it, that reflects pretty poorly on you.
This is a ridiculous stance. Being better than other people in some way is the whole basis of our social hierarchy and much of the motivation for striving at anything.
Edit: On reflection, this brings to mind Michael Malice's razor "Are some people better than others?" Someone right wing says yes; someone left wing gives a speech. I'd characterize the left wing stance here as counter-signaling. "I'm so far above everyone else that I don't need to participate in this competition to prove my worth." It's cool to personally bow out of a competition, but destroying the competition so others can't get value from it is very rude. You could say the same thing about leftists' policy preferences regarding taxation, housing, and immigration. In all of those areas the leftist policies make it harder to prove one is better than others by having wealth/living in an expensive area/being a citizen of a powerful nation.
ChestertonsMeme
blocking the federal fist
9mo ago
I thought unions were like some kind of trade association where all workers join and they collectively bargain with employers if they want access to their skilled labor pool.
That's what they should be. In reality the NLRB and labor law make them more like a local Mafia. Pay us for protection or we'll destroy your business. This is but one example of why libertarians want less regulation: any government power is always corrupted to enrich whoever can get their hands on it.
ChestertonsMeme
blocking the federal fist
1yr ago
Glenn Loury and John McWhorter discuss this on a recent podcast, motivated by the recent example of Ibram X. Kendi’s waning influence:
- NYTimes: Ibram X. Kendi Faces a Reckoning of His Own
- Washington Examiner: Ibram X. Kendi’s intellectual implosion (up for four days then deleted, make of that what you will)
There definitely is a vibe shift and it feels safer for critics of the social justice movement to speak publicly.
ChestertonsMeme
blocking the federal fist
4mo ago
The 14th just says you can't have people who are subjects but not citizens. If you want to make someone a subject then they're a citizen.
A concrete test sounds like the kind of thing for which a law is required. We have some of those, describing the process through which a non-citizen can become naturalized as a citizen. It seems obvious to me that an immigrant, legal or otherwise, is not a subject of the U.S. until they are granted that status through the law. But this is the whole debate. To other people it will seem obvious that someone is a subject unless the law explicitly says otherwise.
The way people immigrate has changed over the last two hundred years, and the 14th Amendment wasn't written to disambiguate modern questions. Congress could answer them if it dared. In the absence of legislation, it seems reasonable for the President to direct the government using his interpretation of the amendment.
ChestertonsMeme
blocking the federal fist
4mo ago
Being a subject of a state is different from being subject to its laws. The purpose of the 14th was to make it clear that former slaves were citizens. In this context "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" means something more like "a subject of the government thereof", in the same way one might be a subject of one's King. It expresses a subject-sovereign relationship.
ChestertonsMeme
blocking the federal fist
10mo ago
This is a good definition. Other commenters have mentioned that punishment being disproportionate is a key aspect of cancel culture, but I don't think it's necessarily bad. Punishment being disproportionate is how people build moral systems that are effective in keeping people from breaking them all the time. 'Cancel culture' is a pejorative term for this process, used when the speaker doesn't like the moral system being developed. But the same process is responsible for creating the morals we all take for granted.
ChestertonsMeme
blocking the federal fist
2yr ago
What would make ChatGPT conscious?
ChestertonsMeme
blocking the federal fist
2yr ago
In your opinion, what should be the legal limit to the 2A? Did Heller go too far, or did it not go too far enough?
ChestertonsMeme
blocking the federal fist
17d ago
- Yes
- Yes
- No, mainly because speed limits are inappropriately low in most cases.
- Left lane is for passing only, but cutting drivers off and tailgating are wrong too.
- No, it's not okay to break the law. However, see 7.
- No, everyone follows the same rules.
- There should be a new law on merging: if another vehicle ahead is signaling to change into your lane, you must slow down to let them in. This would encourage drivers to use the whole roadway instead of lining up a mile back to get into a specific lane. In most cases this would lead to more efficient use of road space, and it would make driving a lot less stressful for people who are not assertive. It's painful to ride with a driver who has no guts and can't assertively merge.
ChestertonsMeme
blocking the federal fist
2yr ago
Humans are humans. Machines are machines. Humans are not machines. Machines aren't human.
The only reason to grant personhood to machines is to assume that there is no such boundary. That we are no different to machines. There is no reason to believe this of course, since in the real world, humans and machines are wildly different both in the way that they are constituted and in their abilities. Notice the constant need to use hypotheticals.
I will offer myself as an example of someone who believes that humans are special and have value in a way that a machine can never have, but who also believes that there are other reasons to grant personhood to machines (or other entities such as alien life). I've already given one: we're basically forced, in a Molochian sense, to grant personhood to anyone or anything whose allyship is important enough. This is analogous to how one can be a nationalist, yet treat foreigners as persons for pragmatic reasons.
All that such a belief stems from, is a religious belief in materialism.
I would not conflate having a theory for how personhood is granted in practice, with a "religious" belief. I'm open to being wrong about this theory; it's falsifiable.
The costs are not symmetric, and the woman bears costs no matter which option is taken.
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