ChestertonsMeme
blocking the federal fist
No bio...
User ID: 1098
ChestertonsMeme
blocking the federal fist
22d ago
I knew what video this was before I clicked on it. It's a classic.
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
20d 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
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
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.
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
2yr ago
Yes, this may be a correlation specific to the city in which I live, because of the way it enforces laws.
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
2yr ago
Isn't that exactly the study Scott commented on? Those freed before the war (possibly due to factors particular to themselves as GP mentioned) are doing better today than those freed slightly later by external factors (the war).
I've got to nitpick though - I think you did the thing you're complaining about! (Although I may be misunderstanding, correct me if I am.)
Yes, you're right - I was trying to highlight the costs that are usually missed; the pedestrian and cyclist lives saved is the front-and-center reason for road diets in the first place so I didn't want to waste space mentioning them.
I would note that good cycling infrastructure induces demand for cycling and that cycling is way more enjoyable than driving when we're talking about short distances at low speeds.
I actually ride a bike to work and my commute is the best part of my day. It's my kids that have to sit in the car those extra two minutes, and their commute is too far to make by bike so they can't take advantage of the extra cycling infrastructure.
The two road diets along my kids' commute are both examples where the city didn't seem to do a cost/benefit analysis and ended up with poor choices for where to do the road diet. In both cases there is already a dedicated bike path nearby that the vast majority of cyclists use to pass through that neighborhood. The new bike lanes only help cyclists that are heading somewhere local. There's good enough access from the dedicated trails that you only need to go one or two blocks on streets, so this doesn't even help much.
Before long, this becomes pretty recursive and we have to admit that this isn't about the numbers, but about a preference for living in a certain sort of place.
There are ways to put numbers on preferences like this. Metrics like walkability scores are a good start. I think what would fall out of a comprehensive adding up of numbers is that clusters of walkability/bikeability with nice local environments (sidewalk trees, street cafes, parks, etc.) and high-ish density are good, and easy travel between such clusters is good (including travel in personal cars because of their convenience). The road diets I mentioned were built in an area that isn't clearly in either category - there is a lot of vehicular through traffic but there are also businesses along the streets, kind of like a low-speed stroad. A better solution (from me as an arm-chair city planner) would have been to push the business district to the adjacent blocks and add any helpful cycling infrastructure there, and leave the through street with more traffic lanes. The through street cannot be moved because of geography. This solution would make for even nicer cycling (no loud traffic passing) and it would reduce trip times for people who have to drive. Cyclists traveling outside the neighborhood already use the aforementioned separate bike path so that's not a concern.
(This is the point at which someone could object that "push the business district to adjacent blocks" has costs for people living nearby which have to be weighed against these other things. Yes, and those should be accounted for too).
I think at least part of the reason for the city to build road diets like this is more of a moral stance against cars. The city is basically taxing driving, making it more unpleasant and time-wasting because the city does not want people driving personal cars. The opponents of bike lanes and road diets refer to this as a "war on cars" and I think there's truth to it. But it's okay to wage a war on car use if it's actually bad! To tell whether it's bad, though, you have to consider all the tradeoffs.
ChestertonsMeme
blocking the federal fist
2yr ago
And after it expands globally to take over 100% of the entire market for left-handed grape peelers in every nation of the earth, what then? How can it continue to grow?
As GP said:
Economic growth just means "continuous improvement". Sometimes that's by making the pie bigger, other times it's from increasing efficiency.
Company F figures out how to manufacture left-handed grape peelers more cheaply, or makes them last longer, or makes them work better, or invents a machine that peels grapes that both left- and right-handed people can use. Or someone else invents a better grape, so the value of grape peelers to people goes up, and more people buy them on the margin. Markets aren't static.
ChestertonsMeme
blocking the federal fist
20d 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
A heat pump is just air conditioning run in reverse. I got one installed last year and it's been great. It's quiet, pretty cheap so far (although I haven't gone a full winter with it yet), and it also does cooling. You need some backup system for when it's really cold, as it doesn't work very well below 25° or so. Mine has a built in gas burner but many just use resistive heating elements.
The reason I wanted one is that it's efficient and it uses electricity. I don't want to be subject to market fluctuations in oil prices or to fuel taxes. Where I live electricity is mostly hydro and doesn't vary much in price. For your situation the numbers might be different, and it's worth doing the math or looking up statistics for other households in the area.
ChestertonsMeme
blocking the federal fist
2yr ago
You can get groceries delivered. This realization eliminated a big time sink and stressor from my family life.
Is quiet important to your family? When my wife and I were house hunting there were large sections of the city that were intolerable because of traffic noise. Conversely, if you don't care about noise you can get a cheaper/better place by tolerating some.
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
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
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.
ChestertonsMeme
blocking the federal fist
2yr ago
What would make ChatGPT conscious?
ChestertonsMeme
blocking the federal fist
2yr ago
I think the better answer is to deny (1), that all information which is instrumentally useful is therefore morally permissible to act on.
Yes, this is the stance that I take. I think it's very uncomfortable for many people, though, because it implies that there is a cost to non-discrimination. You (the general you) will be making poorer choices because you can't take advantage of all the available information.
This is related to Robin Hanson's recent ideas about the sacred, specifically that sacred things cannot be traded off against non-sacred things. Non-discrimination is sacred. Admitting that there is a cost to it is profane and suggests there would be circumstances in which it was permissible to immorally discriminate when the cost of non-discrimination is too high.
ChestertonsMeme
blocking the federal fist
2yr ago
I don't have time to watch the whole Friedman lecture but his first few examples are about market failures, which is a slightly different topic to what I was getting at. What I was trying to express (and didn't do a great job of) was that in discussions of policies, there are often costs that are not mentioned so we never get a full cost/benefit comparison. The specific examples are just examples of the "missing" costs and I wasn't trying to do a full accounting of all the costs/benefits in each example.
First, I think your math is wildly off.
I used expected life-years lost for driving 5 miles, which is approximately 1.46/100m * (5 miles) * (50 years of life left), which multiplies to about 2 minutes. Urban driving reduces that by about half, so it really should be about 1 minute. The specific numbers are not important though; the public conversation was only ever about Vision Zero rather than trip times.
If people are biking or walking instead of driving, then congestion will go down and you won't take more time
Also true! But the numbers matter. I don't think there are a lot of people in my neighborhood whose behavior will be changed by these particular road diets - as I mentioned downthread, there is already a dedicated bike path a block away, and also the neighborhood is hilly, which is a non-starter for most people to bike. I will state that in a full cost-benefit accounting, the road diet might make sense. No one did that analysis though; it was all one-sided statistics and aesthetic judgments.
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.
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
1yr ago
This is a bit hard to parse, but I think the answer is
It would be helpful if the rules for pairings were delineated more clearly.
The costs are not symmetric, and the woman bears costs no matter which option is taken.
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