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ControlsFreak


				

				

				
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joined 2022 October 02 23:23:48 UTC

				

User ID: 1422

ControlsFreak


				
				
				

				
5 followers   follows 0 users   joined 2022 October 02 23:23:48 UTC

					

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User ID: 1422

Thank you for explaining your reasoning. I just wish I could understand it better.

So the first thing I notice is that you cut off the end of the quote you are claiming "might be" interpreted in a certain way.

Combined with

No, he's saying people who only deploy skepticism in one direction and are resistant to evidence are either deluded or using motivated reasoning.

I think my first hypothesis for this explanation would be termed "Disjunctive Relief", and I don't think it would fly elsewhere. I don't think if someone said, "...and the conclusion of my argument (which assumes that my opponents are using motivated reasoning) is that my opponents are Nazis or using motivated reasoning," one would be so generous as to say, "But they did say 'or using motivated reasoning', so maybe they're just saying that they're using motivated reasoning." Nah. It would be interpreted as a way to simply call your opponents Nazis. Of course, if you would like to correct this hypothesis, I will update my understanding of the rules accordingly.

I think my second hypothesis would be that you simply view "TDS" as a slur, which is then subject to the unwritten slurs policy, which "has always" taken into account tone or "vibes". Paired with that, you think that "delusional" is not a slur. Instead, it's just the proper word to describe the conclusion that some people have literal delusions, things that their minds just made up. This is perhaps reasonable, and it would also jive with this comment not being modded, as it uses the slur, but gives enough negative vibes to both sides so as to have the appropriate ethereal balance.

My third hypothesis is that you take specific umbrage with appearing to say that a particular person has TDS. As you put it:

it is not like just calling someone a victim of "TDS" because he criticizes Trump.

In this case, my sub-hypothesis is that this is a version of, "Why use few word when many word do?" My comment was vastly too short on explicitly stating that Ashlael deploys his skepticism in only one direction, is immune or implacably resistant to evidence, and evinces a disgust reaction to Trump that does not correlate to any pre-Trump political commitments. Rather than bulk accusing anyone in the thread who doesn't meet his specific demands for how to respond, I assumed some knowledge of the vast history of a particular poster, without recounting it, to make my conclusion. Therefore, if I had simply explicitly stated the implicit qualifications that went into the conclusion, it would have been considered acceptable.

Finally, as for

I just took the time to explain to you why "No, really, TDS is real and Trump's critics really are deranged, Psychology Today says so!" is not an appropriate excuse for calling someone deranged.

and its precursor

I am not impressed by citations from Psychology Today. You may recall that back in the late 90s and oughts there was something of a cottage industry of articles from psychologists and linguists and others arguing very soberly that, essentially, conservatives are all mentally ill and/or fascists whose mommies didn't love them enough. I'm sure you would not be receptive to someone "shorthanding" this concept in such a way as to simply label conservatives crazy.

I think you misunderstand the point of citing PT. PT is almost certainly not pro-Trump. They are almost certainly maximally skeptical of the concept of TDS and maximally likely to portray it in the least charitable light possible. Citing them is the opposite of support for my interpretation. It is saying that even if you start from the most skeptical position possible, my interpretation still captures a phenomenon that is coherent. This is a completely different attempt than, say, citing some random psychologist in a left-wing publication who criticizes a right-wing politician or vice-versa.

Finally, if I can fully combine them here now, I would like to respond to:

"Anti-Trump partisan" will do.

I think this completely fails to engage with the entire paragraph I wrote on the topic:

I think one could be an anti-Trump partisan without having TDS. Primarily, if they don't experience a higher-than-typical (for his or her self) level of political disgust about Trump. I don't get that sense from AshLael. I don't see him posting about, say, anything in Aussie politics in a way that oozes disgust for the spectacle.

In your follow-on, you say:

If you want to make the much longer argument you made above - that "TDS" is actually a thing and represents more than simply hating Trump - then you will have to do so, by making that argument (and explaining why it applies to the OP).

I think I best interpret this as hypothesis two, that you currently think that TDS is just a slur and that every usage of it either must therefore balance the ethereal vibes or come with a full explanation of the complete meaning, every time. That's fair enough, but it doesn't address what I had actually asked for - a shorthand way of saying that concept without having to copy/paste an entire explanation every time. Perhaps none exists, and I will simply end up having to copy/paste every time, but that none exists does not actually mean that "anti-Trump partisan" will do.

EDIT: Also, I'd like to make a note on your comment:

I just took the time to explain to you why "No, really, TDS is real and Trump's critics really are deranged, Psychology Today says so!" is not an appropriate excuse for calling someone deranged. Once again I conclude that taking the time to write long paragraphs explaining my reasoning and trying to be fair to people who are only here to take cheap shots is a waste of my time and charity. I will not make this mistake with you again.

I would like to submit the timestamp of my comment here at 9:30AM EST, while your nice explanation is timestamped at 9:08AM EST. I was on a rush out of the house yesterday morning. I don't have the clearest memory, because I mostly remember trying to get out of the house, but I don't believe I had seen your 9:08AM comment at the time that I started writing or posted my 9:30AM comment. I believe I did click refresh and saw it before I left the house, but definitely didn't have time to respond to it yesterday. I think you worrying about "making this mistake with [me] again" would, itself, be a mistake of fact.

I'm not equipped to make vibes-based arguments, and I don't know any other topic (except maybe trans gender identity?) where this is seen as an acceptable basis to hold a belief.

I prefer actual evidence. All I know how to do is to dig into specific claims with specifics

To build on @HlynkaCG's perspective flip and attempt to provide actual evidence and specific claims with specifics to what is fundamentally, we can agree, a "vibes-based argument" (because I take @HylnkaCG's perspective flip to be that the vibes of legitimacy are, in fact, fundamental), I would point to a couple comments I've made here about the importance of secrecy in voting, including specifics of how it has been minimized or cast aside entirely in the "new normal", as well as specific claims from a plethora of international pro-democracy, pro-election-legitimacy-methods organizations.

I will again freely admit that the conclusion of such specifics are cashed out in vibes. One of the international organizations that I quoted concluded:

Ballot delivery, marking, and counting systems used in postal voting present considerable and unique challenges to the integrity of elections. There are several commonly used procedural safeguards for voting by mail, such as ballot secrecy envelopes, witness requirements and signature verification. However, these technical solutions may not be enough to instill confidence in postal voting if there is diminished public trust in electoral processes and administration.

That is, the end result of what you do, of any specifics that you discuss, must be measured in the extent to which it "instill[s] confidence" or "diminishe[s] public trust".

Would you be interested in a further debate concerning specifics of how voting secrecy works, why we have it, what methods are commonly used to ensure it, specific things that have been done which violate the specific demands of voting secrecy, etc., even though the end conclusion of that discussion necessarily cashes out in terms of vibes/confidence/trust?

if the skepticism is primarily/only deployed in one direction, or if it is immune or implacably resistant to evidence, then it's also reasonable to conclude the skepticism is either the source of delusion

Whereas this, I'm not sure if @Amadan would say it violates the rules this week or not. It might be interpreted as implying that your opponents are simply blind, irrational, partisan haters.

It's pretty rich to claim that that's "victimless", because if that is true, it would have undercut the justification for the case. That case is clearly premised on securities fraud harming either existing shareholders or shareholders who bought shares based on the fraudulent claims. Moreover, it is inconceivable that this had "zero pressure" from a victim (or at least a self-proclaimed victim), because lots of people think they're "victims" of climate change (and thus, any potentially fraudulent statements made about it). It's the foundation of the case, whether or not it is ultimately flawed, and that foundation is contrary to how you've portrayed it.

This is vastly better binned in the Matt Levine category of "Everything Is Securities Fraud". We know, it is baked in, that literally any conceivable case of securities fraud (literally "Everything", says Levine) will at least be attempted at some point. It's like Rule 34 for a particular statute.

But yeah, if you think that the Trump case is most akin to an area where everyone pretty much agrees that it's all just lawfare, grasping at every possible iteration of a theme, often specifically to pursue specific political goals (like climate change) rather than focusing on remedying fraud-as-traditionally-understood, then I think the point is actually made.

accusing people of TDS (another way of saying "You aren't rational, all your arguments are coming from blind partisan hatred")

I disagree. Psychology Today says:

There is no shared lay understanding of TDS, mainly because it is a folk category rather than a professional category. As such, there is currently much armchair speculation about the nature and existence of TDS, without consensus.

The name itself explicitly suggests a "syndrome," which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as "a characteristic combination of opinions, emotions, or behavior." Several commentators have run with this, putting forth suggestions about opinions, emotions and behaviors characterizing TDS.

Shared amongst these is a notion that the everyday activities of President Trump trigger some people into distorted opinions, extreme emotions and hysterical behaviors.

Given a concept so vague, there is obviously lots of room for a 'spectrum' here. It is notable that what I said was about TDS, not about Ash. I said:

TDS knows no pre-existing political boundaries.

That is, I am remarking on the incredible nature of TDS, which I would posit is really just shorthand for, "Significantly higher than an individual's normal level of political disgust, specifically in response to Donald Trump, which does not seem to be associated with a clear set of prior political commitments". That is, the value of the term is twofold: 1) It is, indeed, a heightened level of political disgust, which often carries with it some level of "extreme emotions" that PT speaks of, and 2) It is a unique phenomenon that seems to be attached to Trump, himself, rather than traditional politics, therefore in want of nomenclature. I think that some people with TDS manifest with distorted opinions and hysterical behaviors, but the ontologically-prior nature is simply political disgust. (I would admit that this comes must more closely intertwined with "extreme emotions" than the others.)

I think one could be an anti-Trump partisan without having TDS. Primarily, if they don't experience a higher-than-typical (for his or her self) level of political disgust about Trump. I don't get that sense from AshLael. I don't see him posting about, say, anything in Aussie politics in a way that oozes disgust for the spectacle.

One could also be an anti-Trump partisan or even have TDS, yet still make rational arguments. I think there is a huge distinction between a person's personal level of disgust and their tolerance/capacity to make rational arguments in spite of their disgust. Sure, there are some people who cannot tame their disgust, but there are absolutely others who can. I'm sure you can identify several posters here who are absolutely, at their core, disgusted by some of the topics they write about, yet continue to hold themselves to high standards of rationality. The point of rationality, as I understand it, is not to eliminate all emotions, even strong ones or ones concerning disgust. It is not to simply rest on nothing but cold, hard, logic. Instead, it's to understand those emotions and that disgust, and to value it properly, while remaining rational.

Finally, I will absolutely maintain that I did not say that AshLael is being irrational. I spoke merely concerning his partisan valance and to note that this partisan valence, being a somewhat unique phenomenon that seems to be incredibly linked to disgust, does not correlate with prior political divides.

EDIT: If you have a suggestion for an alternate term I could use to indicate this concept, I'm all ears and will switch with haste.

I only briefly perused one of the Balko posts (and haven't watched any of the videos he's responding to). I wanted to skip to the bit about the departmental training manual. I found the post very confused and focused on a further step of tying up a suspect, at which point you'd need to do various things like put them on their side, monitor them medically, etc. The post seemed to simply not understand that most of what it was citing wasn't relevant unless you had tied up the suspect.

As Ash says, he's not a leftist partisan; he's purely an anti-Trump partisan. TDS knows no pre-existing political boundaries.

Yeah, I don't think this conversation was ever about entirely banning all encryption. Just about major companies like Facebook, Google, Apple, who the OP was claiming have better security than you anyway. A more general encryption policy discussion would have to encompass the more varied details of smaller organizations, their capability to do security in the first place, and the respective values of the information that goes across their wires. Plus obvious economic questions like regulatory entrenchment and such.

This conversation is about E2EE of Facebook messages, not bank transactions. Law enforcement/government can just subpoena your bank to get your bank transactions.

this key is going to have to be accessed by millions of law enforcement officers and government officials

Also BZZZZT. As I said, the only people that ever access this key are a small number of approved Facebook insiders. Law enforcement/government make requests (with warrants) to Facebook, but they never even touch the handle to the door of the vault that contains the computer with the HSM with the key.

But the threat that I'm talking about is from actors who have legitimate access to the vault.

This is why I had said:

Of course, this method would also be subject to the possibility of abuse by the small number of FB insiders who are tasked with this warrant service, but that, by the terms of the argument made above, "does not increase the risk further than the non-E2E case," because in the non-E2E case, FB can also trivially abuse their access to your messages. The question here is to what extent you think FB is, itself, a threat actor, but I think the terms of the argument above stipulated that they weren't. The appropriate criticism (seen elsewhere here) is that they are.

How would it be leaked? It's buried in an HSM that is not connected to the internet and housed in an access-controlled vault. Just assuming a breakage of the first of those conditions (extracting a key from an HSM) utterly breaks all device security guarantees you have for all the devices you own. If step one of your plan to "leak" this key is to be able to break all device security guarantees for all devices everywhere, then we can probably conclude that this thing doesn't constitute a meaningful additional risk over the status quo. Like, mayyyyybe an epsilon increase, maybe. But that epsilon is sooooo small that it would be dwarfed by a literal billion other security improvements we could make in every other aspect of our digital computing.

I think the first answer is "zoning reform". If it was as trivially easy to spam new housing as YIMBYs would like it to be, a would-be monopolist would be chasing an ever-moving target.

I think the second answer is that even in the current environment, there is a lot of land. It would take absolutely insane levels of invested capital to build a portfolio that has anything approaching market power. Very localized market power would hopefully be mitigated by (1), as you can just go down the street some number of miles and build more, but the option to move to the next city is a pretty decent escape from monopoly. We've already seen plenty of less-than-super-money-loaded (i.e., not tech) companies flee from the high costs in California locations (just due to NIMBY, not even self-assessed-tax-derived monopoly). It definitely requires them to take a one-time hit, but these are the forces that move the system toward equilibrium.

I think the third answer is that the homeowner should, in theory, assess their property at a value that would actually sufficiently compensate them for the move. That is, it should include their moving costs, the cost of an alternate home in an alternate location, and whatever inconveniences come with that alternative. This is, of course, in theory, and it would be quite difficult to assess in practice. If done appropriately, it would be paired with significant reduction in tax rates, as valuations would be significantly higher than current purchase prices. Of course, Weyl's ilk aren't actually motivated by assessing things properly, so they'll immediately defect and jack rates up to be punitive toward anyone with wealth/assets. This is the real reason why such a scheme is not feasible; there is no likely political commitment to using this tool in a way that would actually be beneficial to a market economy rather than highly detrimental. I'd be much much much more concerned about this than investment company monopoly.

As perhaps a compliment to this, but phrased in a way that may be less antagonistic, notable proponent of open borders Brian Caplan was recently asked to steelman the "Bordertarian" position. He replied:

Sure. I'd focus on immigrants' high Democratic share, combined with (a) the strong leftist shift of the Democrats, and (b) the idea that the Median Voter Model overstates the importance of policy relative to raw party loyalty. Since even high-skilled (and white!) immigrants lean strongly Democratic, continuing immigration has at least a 20-30% chance of durably handing woke socialists one-party control of at least the U.S. federal government.

I think most people acknowledge that culture and politics is one of, if not the main really significant hurdle to open borders. Beyond that, it gets to be a bit difficult to make predictions, especially about the future. What would the voting blocs end up looking like? What kind of policies would end up being pursued? Damn if it's not hard to know. But it is potentially quite scary, especially as it already feels like core Western principles and freedoms are already hanging at knife's edge.

Probably agreed that it is highly unlikely that the new political alignment, whatever the details, would adopt the rest of the OP's platform.

The extremely low-level version of this is the classic example of a free, simple app. I heard the story of one recently that was just an app that let you change the brightness of the flashlight on some phones that didn't have that functionality built in. It started off just having basic ads. But as it became less and less profitable, crowded out by things like more phones having it just built-in, they saw the writing on the wall. Presumably, they just sold it to someone else, but I don't know in this particular case. In any event, either the original owner or someone who bought it added really obtrusive video ads... and then snuck in a $15/month subscription charge. Basically just banking on it already being installed in some number of phones, and some number of them not really noticing or accidentally clicking the wrong thing and not noticing and such. This is the really simple version.

I'd have to try to go back and see if I can find any real examples, but you can imagine that an app that collects a bunch of data on you, maybe biometric data and such, could end up on a downward spiral, profitwise. Who freaking knows how they'll sell it in order to make that last buck? Who knows what form of shady scaremongering they could do, "We see that you have this gene, and you're really in danger of [medical problem] (that is barely supportable by the scientific evidence), so you really ought to consult with [our shady partner who sells you some worthless shit and kicks us back money]."

Actually, just as I finished writing that, I thought of the example of virus protection software. That shit was constantly burying itself deeper and deeper into your system, until it had basically unfettered access to everything. Lots of people kept using it, mostly out of inertia. As it started getting squeezed out of the market, they started squeezing customers harder and causing all sorts of problems, not least of which is the tension between, "If our software has a vulnerability, attackers can use that to get deep access to your system, but you're probably oblivious to the details of how that works, so we're actually kind of okay with it, so long as it scares enough people to keep paying the subscription."

This is a common talking point, but it's never really made sense. People go down the route of saying, "Well, you can't have a mathematically provable way of verifying the validity of warrants," but that's not really relevant to the typical digital threat vectors that are normally relevant (I.e., a 400lb guy in a bed in Russia attacking your device over the internet thousands of times in the middle of the night). You can pretty easily have FB keep a private key in an HSM locked in a vault somewhere, not connected to the internet, and after their legal department has fully vetted the warrant request, they could take the encrypted blob of messages into the vault and use the purpose-built hardware to decrypt it. Sure, add some qualifier about, "..can only be used with a warrant, up to the accuracy with which FB's legal team can determine the validity of said warrant," but then your only objection fades away.

Of course, this method would also be subject to the possibility of abuse by the small number of FB insiders who are tasked with this warrant service, but that, by the terms of the argument made above, "does not increase the risk further than the non-E2E case," because in the non-E2E case, FB can also trivially abuse their access to your messages. The question here is to what extent you think FB is, itself, a threat actor, but I think the terms of the argument above stipulated that they weren't. The appropriate criticism (seen elsewhere here) is that they are.

Either for ideology or just to squeeze out a few more dollars. If Google's moats start falling, and their profits start falling with them, the first sign will just be that products start being less good. This is understandable and fine; they won't have as much funny money to blow on non-profit-centers that only add marginally, but that customers like. But if it gets really bad, well, there's always Baker's Law: "You never know how evil a technology can be until the engineers who created it fear for their jobs."

I think there ought to be some informal fallacy that describes this pattern.

Central Planner's Fallacy? Non-Agentic Fallacy? Just "Ignorance of Game Theory"? By that, I'm speaking specifically with respect your example, where I think the fundamental driver for the distinction between what happens at what you call the "statistical" versus "mechanical" levels is the presence of agents who make their own choices. Maybe you're getting at something else, but then I'd appreciate an additional example that doesn't have this feature.

On this topic, I really smell a meme of, "Just fucking tell me how I'm allowed to execute people." The unfortunate thing for @Rov_Scam is that, even if he is personally willing to tell you how he'll let you execute people, he doesn't speak for all of the other folks who are against whatever variations of capital punishment. And of course, there are some folks who are just against it in general and will jump back and forth between arguments willy-nilly.

I think the proponents of capital punishment would easily be able to rally their ranks around any particular method of execution that was Officially (TM) deemed acceptable by opponents. I don't think any plurality of opponents can be formed to credibly commit to finding any particular method of execution acceptable.

I think it would definitely be a heavy lift with SCOTUS. I then have an unfortunate thought, that if it's just an EO, SCOTUS probably shuts it down... but if it were an actual, no bullshit statute passed by the full Congress, it might have a legit chance. Of course, I doubt that will happen anytime soon, but in this same thread, I also tried considering the legality of Congress just passing a statute declaring that the borders must be open, so I am a sucker for these sorts of, "What is the actual limiting principle," questions.

See their questions 5 and 12, in particular. Again, they still obviously want to keep the option of 'action and inaction together' open as their primary argument, but they directly and affirmatively claim that yes, they think that inaction alone can be "giving aid and comfort" within their reading of Section 3. Of course, this is divorced from the distinction in Section 3 between "engaging in insurrection" and "giving aid and comfort to enemies", which other briefs think are distinct things. I.e., others think that "enemies" must mean "foreign enemies", given whatever history/definitions, whereas the Amar bros do the sort of smashing together of the two parts to get an idea of "giving aid and comfort to people who are engaging in insurrection" rather than "engaging in insurrection" being separate from "giving aid and comfort to enemies".

At best, one could say that they're implicitly claiming that anyone who engages in insurrection is an "enemy", but a Ctrl+F for "enemies" and "enemy" shows only one result for each, neither of which engages with this thorny question. Therefore, I think my reading is a fair representation of what they have actually written in their brief. They might have some other nuanced view that isn't actually in the text of what they wrote, but that's what they wrote. I'll remind you that these are the statements I've made concerning their brief on this question:

we have briefs by eminent Constitutional scholars submitted to the Supreme Court saying that it is sufficient for Trump to have simply done nothing to stop it.

,

The argument I referred to wasn't even this; it is purely about inaction, that Trump is culpable for not doing anything about it.

,

They clearly want to give the Court as many options as possible, to say that a combination of words/actions/inactions is enough, and if words aren't good because 1A or something, then they can say that a combination of actions/inactions is enough, and if that's not good because he took basically no actual actions that they can stomach making precedent for disqualification-by-insurrection, then they can say that just inaction is enough.

I really cannot see how that is not a fair reading of what they wrote.

Illegals’ kids voting is something that can only be stopped by constitutional amendment re. birthright citizenship.

So, crazy legal position alert, but I'm not sure that's entirely true. Yes, I'm aware of the standard view that Wong Kim Ark declared birthright citizenship as inviolable Constitutional law, but I actually don't think it's that clear.

One can start with Elk v. Wilkins. John Elk was born on a reservation, but the case had approximately nothing to do with physical location. I’m not sure that anyone would think that it would have come out differently if his parents had left the reservation briefly to, say, have his birth in a particular hospital. Instead, it was entirely about political allegiance - his political allegiance was to the tribe, not the United States, even though he had left the reservation as an adult and spent much of his life in the US "proper". Much of Wong Kim Ark discusses political allegiance, as well. AFAICT, the rule they embraced was, “Political allegiance has something to do with it, but we think that the only cases that are clear are foreign ministers (not consuls, though, for complicated weird reasons) and invaders (huh, that word again)... oh, and Indians are weird, yo.” Were there reasons for the court to think that the case in front of them should not be excepted? They cite The Schooner Exchange v. M’Faddon:

The reasons for not allowing to other aliens exemption “from the jurisdiction of the country in which they are found” were stated as follows:

When private individuals of one nation spread themselves through another as business or caprice may direct, mingling indiscriminately with the inhabitants of that other, or when merchant vessels enter for the purposes of trade, it would be obviously inconvenient and dangerous to society, and would subject the laws to continual infraction and the government to degradation, if such individuals or merchants did not owe temporary and local allegiance, and were not amenable to the jurisdiction of the country. Nor can the foreign sovereign have any motive for wishing such exemption. His subjects thus passing into foreign counties are not employed by him, nor are they engaged in national pursuits. Consequently there are powerful motives for not exempting persons of this description from the jurisdiction of the country in which they are found, and no one motive for requiring it. The implied license, therefore, under which they enter can never be construed to grant such exemption.

In short, the judgment in the case of The Exchange declared, as incontrovertible principles, that the jurisdiction of every nation within its own territory is exclusive and absolute, and is susceptible of no limitation not imposed by the nation itself; that all exceptions to its full and absolute territorial jurisdiction must be traced up to its own consent, express or implied; that, upon its consent to cede, or to waive the exercise of, a part of its territorial jurisdiction rest the exemptions from that jurisdiction of foreign sovereigns or their armies entering its territory with its permission, and of their foreign ministers and public ships of war, and that the implied license under which private individuals of another nation enter the territory and mingle indiscriminately with its inhabitants for purposes of business or pleasure can never be construed to grant to them an exemption from the jurisdiction of the country in which they are found.

You can start to see how there might be room here. There’s still a linkage between jurisdiction and allegiance, but it’s not entirely clear how it operates in all cases. They’re imputing a temporary allegiance to common travelers, but even this stems from “the implied license under which they enter”. It’s squishy. There are indicators that go the other way, too.

Further, I should note that the majority opinion was clear about the fact that they were engaging in a common law approach to this question (while taking some guidance from the above-quoted statute using the language “not subject to any foreign power”). There’s a lot of squishy room here, which is why the same folks who would call it an invasion for purposes of A4S4 would want to call it an invasion for the question of birthright citizenship – they're essentially saying, “We recognized two cases that were clearly problematic from the perspective of political allegiance; I think this a third.” And I’m not sure that there’s any super knockdown legal argument against that. In fact, if faced with a statute saying, “Illegal aliens are on this side of the political allegiance line; we clearly and obviously have not given them any implied license to be here whatsoever,” rather than engaging purely in a common law exercise, I’m not sure how the Wong Kim Ark Court goes. (They had a statute saying that he couldn’t be naturalized, but that’s clearly different.)

The Amar Bros. Now, of course they also say that they think his words/actions incited the insurrection, but you know the old joke about, "I don't know anything about whatever it is you're talking about, and if I did know something, which I vehemently deny, it would be that I couldn't have done it, because I don't have the specific tools needed to open that sort of safe, and if I did have the specific tools needed to open that sort of safe, ......"

They clearly want to give the Court as many options as possible, to say that a combination of words/actions/inactions is enough, and if words aren't good because 1A or something, then they can say that a combination of actions/inactions is enough, and if that's not good because he took basically no actual actions that they can stomach making precedent for disqualification-by-insurrection, then they can say that just inaction is enough.

And egads, I forgot how incredible their run from Brandenberg was. They throw the entire thing in the trash heap in like one sentence, saying that it's "super-strict" and doesn't "automatically" carry over from criminal law to ballot eligibility. Ok, so just because something might not be "automatic" doesn't actually provide an argument either way. But what they propose is hilariously bad. Since you can be denied from office by refusing to say the Oath, somehow, that "automatically" means that there are no free speech protections whatsoever when it comes to the question of ballot eligibility. Just wow. I would normally lol at the folks who point to the speech of Dems around the BLM riots and say that they could get to disqualification from there, but if these people have their way, there really is nothing stopping such a result.

Canada doesn't use the new nitrogen hypoxia method. Canada uses the "old" lethal injection protocol that has been horribly cruel for decades, at least since it has been adopted in the US for capital punishment. Prior to adoption by the US for capital punishment, lethal injection was the "new" humane way of killing someone, and it was only the barbarous Americans who were still killing people via electric chair, which was the "old" protocol. At least, the electric chair was the "old", barbarous method only after the US adopted it for capital punishment. Before that, it was the "new" humane way of killing someone, and it was only the barbarous Americans who were still killing people via firing squad, which was the "old" protocol. Before that, ....

by speech or by writing, incited

Note that, to the extent that this does qualify, it is still an active thing. The argument I referred to wasn't even this; it is purely about inaction, that Trump is culpable for not doing anything about it. A test concerning incitement does not seem to rest on mere inaction. Instead, it would look a lot more like Brandenberg, which most folks are trying to run away from as fast as possible.

I don't know if the best argument for that would be that it violates A4S4. Perhaps better would be to ask which provision of the Constitution authorizes them to pass such a law. A1S8 authorizes them "To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization", so they could presumably, with the aid of any one state, declare that literally every person on the planet is naturalized, making it illegal for a state gov't to turn them away. Best as I can tell, any direct control over border interactions is much more subtly read in, with the type of reading depending a bit on the theory.

E.g., one might say that the ability to exclude people from entering your territory is inherent in sovereignty. That's a completely plausible way to get to the federal government's ability to enact laws restricting immigration, but in the US, states are also separate sovereigns, so they would presumably also have such rights. In this case, the feds wouldn't have all that much ability to tell the states that they have to have fewer restrictions.

Alternatively, one might frame it as the ability to exclude or to welcome in people being inherent in sovereignty. As such, it would set up a massive clash of the Supremacy Clause with the doctrine of equal sovereignty. Those types of cases tend to turn on the opinions of a small number of Justices feeling out how they read the "structure" of the Constitution, which is always a murky endeavor.

At least with Am14S3, there is a requirement that an individual "engaged in" insurrection, yet even there, we have briefs by eminent Constitutional scholars submitted to the Supreme Court saying that it is sufficient for Trump to have simply done nothing to stop it. A4S4 doesn't speak to any individual engaging in the invasion, helping it along, or being passive to it. What people in the US are currently doing WRT a possible "invasion" simply has no bearing to the current question of whether it is, in fact, an "invasion" according to the Constitution. The conclusion of that question would have implications as to what certain folks are supposed to do, but that someone is or is not doing what they are supposed to do is not dispositive on the question of what the word means. For example, if we saw the government performing unconstitutional searches as a policy choice, we wouldn't say that it must be the case that those searches don't actually fall under the Constitutional definition of a search. We'd just say that they're doing a thing that they're not supposed to be doing. It would be similarly silly to say that Jan6 couldn't meet the definition of insurrection if Trump made it a policy of the gov't to let them into the Capitol.

To be clear, I'm not taking a position on whether it is or is not an "invasion". That would require different analysis.