ControlsFreak
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User ID: 1422
ControlsFreak
3yr ago
He broke the law, didn't he?
ControlsFreak
3yr ago
those Americans who have some measure of trust in the criminal justice system (54% by this poll)
That is a pretty abysmal number, TBH, especially when the plurality of the three categories you're counting was in the middle of the overall range (they essentially had a scale of 1-5, and you're counting the 38% who were the equivalent of a 3). Also, it has clearly been trending downward, which is a bad sign. People are losing trust, because they're seeing what is actually happening. They keep getting told that this case or that case isn't a perfect equivalent, so we can't really be sure that there is a double-standard in play, but such a position keeps becoming less and less plausible.
Short Circuit just linked to a case in the D.C. Circuit:
In summer 2020, thousands of protesters gather in D.C., leading to much sidewalk-chalking of the phrase "Black Lives Matter"—a violation of D.C.'s defacement ordinance. No chalking-related arrests ensue. Around the same time, however, police arrest pro-life protesters for chalking "Black Pre-Born Lives Matter." Selective enforcement in violation of the First Amendment and the equal-protection component of the Fifth Amendment? (Shout out to you, Bolling v. Sharpe!) District court: No dice. D.C. Circuit: Agreed that there are no dice to be had on the equal-protection claim, since there are no allegations that D.C. officials had a discriminatory motive. But the plaintiffs have plausibly alleged dice under the First Amendment, which prohibits viewpoint discrimination whatever the gov't's motives might be.
Extremely high-profile uses of real bureaucratic power in service of The Party get noticed. Suddenly changing COVID messaging to allow for political protests that serve The Party got noticed. Differential enforcement of laws got noticed. Some of those times, apologists can retreat behind claims that there could have been differences, but the Difference of the Gaps argument is running thin as examples are mounting and we're seeing even circuit courts have to admit that it sure darn seems like laws are being selectively enforced depending upon whether The Party approves of the viewpoint being expressed. I've seen a lot of your comments here, but I don't think you've ever actually engaged seriously with this challenge. Every time someone tries to allege disparate treatment, it just rolls off your back. If you still have "some" measure of faith in the criminal justice system, can you agree with the D.C. Circuit that at least this sure seems be a pretty plausible example of disparate treatment based on the political viewpoint of the "criminals" in question?
ControlsFreak
3yr ago
Would you say the same thing about Navalny?
ControlsFreak
3yr ago
Do you think that being able to create a situation where your political opposition must run their campaign from a prison cell counts as actual power? Is it actual power when Putin does it?
ControlsFreak
3yr ago
You cannot leave the prison
I mean, at this point, I don't think any of us knows how any of this would work. If he actually won the election, even from prison, would they petition for a temporary suspension of his sentence, in order to carry out the duties of office? Would it go through? Who knows. There is zero case history here. Maybe some enterprising law profs are preparing review articles on this topic at this very moment... but yeah, I doubt we have any idea what would end up happening.
ControlsFreak
3yr ago
I maintain that "I can imagine a product being adulterated by bad things" is not sufficient reasoning for population rates. One data point that would have to be explained in the chart I linked is the prevalence of prescription opioid deaths. Why aren't other illegal substances, which are presumably adulterated with rat poison, also off the charts in comparison?
ControlsFreak
3yr ago
I think TI alone isn't the right metric to look at. Wiki would put cocaine and alcohol as similar (15 and 10, respectively), even worse than morphine. Rather than it being only a manufacturing concern, I think there's a significant consumability concern, probably with factors of tolerance/euphoric dose/need-to-try-more as you mention, as well as the culture around consumption. Like, you still have to try pretty darn hard to physically consume enough alcohol before your body starts rejecting it (or build up enough of a tolerance). "I'm already drunk as hell, but I want to push to even higher levels.... oops, now I'm asleep," seems to be somewhat of a limiting factor. "I'm already high as hell, but can you imagine popping one or two more before dozing off?" ...takes about five seconds. And that doesn't even account for mixing drugs. Been drinking half the night, just took a hit of whatever, now you're not thinking straight, just thinking about how desperately your body wants to get suuuuuper high right now. You're probably not going to be rationally counting out your pills or whatever according to a dosing chart (for values of "you" that include far less intelligent/conscientious classes of people than you, particularly).
ControlsFreak
3yr ago
I just learned that ride-on power trowels exist. What a phenomenal piece of incredible technology. It leaves me with a question. Turning left/right seems obvious. But how about forward/backward motion? In videos that I've watched of them operating, I can't detect something like the machine bringing the rotors to a stop and changing their direction of rotation in order to change from the vehicle moving forward to moving backward. So, what is the mechanism by which it's able to change from forward to backward translation? I'm familiar with helicopter controls, and I can't imagine it's anything nearly that complicated.
This line of thinking is tempting as well, that it's just product uncertainty. There may be some factor, but I'm skeptical that it would be the overwhelming factor that a lot of people think. One could easily talk about two movies from this image. In one movie, fentanyl is primarily about product uncertainty, and that has driven a rise in deaths. In another movie, fentanyl is just way more potent and way more dangerous in general, so of course it's going to be higher. But hell, there are still quite a few prescription opioid deaths there; those are chugging along, even though they don't have the same product uncertainty problem. Instead, they mostly fit into the ordering just fine in terms of inherent danger of the substance, regardless of product uncertainty.
Even alcohol is still chugging along, causing deaths, even though there's basically no product uncertainty there. People still try to cram as much as they can into their bodies, just to see if they can and to see if it feels "super awesome, yo". They still party and try different shit, not actually paying all that much attention to what someone is pouring for them or what pill was handed to them. Certainly not carefully looking up the risk statistics of mixing substances and consulting a dosing chart or whatever. Nah, it's, "GET DAT SHIT IN ME AND LET'S GET SUPER HIGH!"
Maybe I'll try putting it this way... the belief that it's just about product uncertainty smells to me a lot like one of Rob Henderson's luxury beliefs. Sure, you may be a rich upper class person who can manage to make casual cocaine holiday work in your life, so long as there isn't product uncertainty in your cocaine, but for many many other people, life just isn't like that. Intense addiction, the need to try always-increasing quantities, and frankly low intelligence/conscientiousness is just going to lead to deaths mostly in proportion to how inherently dangerous the substances are. Product uncertainty can play a role, but a more minor one.
Finally, even if acute ODs do go down a little, what is the cost in terms of long-term mortality? During alcohol prohibition, the government was literally poisoning alcohol, and yet the health benefits in terms of long-term mortality and such were much more significant than the acute effects of their literal, intentional poisoning.
ControlsFreak
3yr ago
If we do the same for opioids, usage will go through the roof
You don't need the dependent clause. We can just do the math (economics). Many moons ago, at the old old old place, I did an estimate, ignoring any effect of removing criminal penalties, ignoring any effect of branding/marketing/whathaveyou, ignoring any cultural or other developments which could change the elasticities, of how usage of marijuana might change in response to the change in price that was observed. Let's just say that anyone who thinks that usage of drugs is going to go down (or even stay flat) in response to legalization is getting high on their own supply. Marginal Revolution just referred to Portugal. The Bloody Atlantic is almost going after Oregon. It was trendy to think otherwise for a while (I believed it when I was a kid), but like most silly lefty trends, at some point the need to shut out the data and embrace cognitive dissonance becomes too difficult.
ControlsFreak
3yr ago
the power of the civil service lies in manipulation and persuasion. It's not actual power.
I think you lost the thread of this conversation. We're talking about the civil service deciding to prosecute someone who they view as a major political opponent. They're trying to put their political opponent in a cage and strip his name off the ballot. If accomplished, that is actual power.
Not only was the British bureaucracy caught with their pants down on Brexit the way the American bureaucracy was caught in 2016 (they thought it was already so unlikely to go through with the regular measures that there was no need to pull out all the stops), but I find it unlikely that the British bureaucracy feared something like Brexit in the same way that the American bureaucracy feared being dominated by Trump/Trumpists.
Stewart Baker's great line about technology is that you never know how evil a technology can be until the engineers who designed it fear for their jobs. Trump was something like that, but somehow, maybe even worse. It's likely totally irrational fear, but most fear is irrational. That fear, and the knowledge that they got wrecked when they only implemented regular measures, was sufficient that they decided to roll the dice as many times as possible on as many questionable charges as they could come up with, knowing that they don't actually have total control of any one process and can't completely guarantee success in any one venue. They've had this power of prosecution in their back pocket for a long time. They've always kind of known it was there; it's the classic stuff of banana republics. They simply haven't tried smacking it down and asserting their hard power in quite such a fashion, maybe since Ted Stevens.
ControlsFreak
3yr ago
A democrat who lied to the feds about the boxes would've been prosecuted too.
Do you have an opinion on why Paul Combetta was not prosecuted? The IG report shows that the FBI agents who interviewed him were 100% sure that he "lied his ass off", that they could prove it, and that they were confused to the point of having no idea why he wasn't charged, because that charge would normally be automatic.
ControlsFreak
3yr ago
In theory, yes. In practice, I can't recommend highly enough that you watch Yes, Minister. There was a post about it here not too long ago. It's utterly brilliant. You will laugh a lot. You will have a joyous time watching it. It will be the highlight of your year.
ControlsFreak
3yr ago
If weight loss is simply a case of choosing to eat less and choosing to move more, why does all the literature show that dieters regain their weight in the long term?
Because they stop eating less and moving more. This is, uh, pretty simple? Whether they consciously pay enough attention to make it an affirmative choice or just slip into habits casually because they're no longer paying attention is not really the operative thing here.
ControlsFreak
3yr ago
Perhaps we need some way of gathering data by sending a bunch of obese testers to doctors. Sort of in any event, either response is equally useless, though I can understand why doctors would opt for either path, given their experiences/incentives. What I think we can both probably agree on is that they are not likely to give real, actionable advice that can be directly pursued to success, and that is the real shame.
ControlsFreak
3yr ago
they regularly get badgered to lose weight by doctors and skinny relatives
In the Year of Our Lord 2023, is that really the case? My sense from the doctors I know as friends is that they are absolutely loath to suggest, "Ya know, diet and exercise could help with..." because they know 1) Patients don't want to hear it, and 2) They aren't going to do it anyway.
I have other close friends who are obese and have proactively asked their doctor for help. Like pleading to have some direction, a support structure, a pathway to success. You know what the most phenomenal response I heard was? "Well, you're getting older... [next topic]."
In forums like this one, people constantly constantly lie about how weight loss/gain works. One bucket is CICO disbelievers generally (the true cranks). Others retreat to some form of, "Well, CICO may be true, but it's not helpful, so we really just need to point out that most people have absolutely no control over their weight." This is a complete lie that is far less helpful than explaining how things actually work and making suggestions for how to properly plan, build a support system, etc. It is not the people who are saying, "This is the way, walk you in it," who are doing the thing that doesn't work. It is the people who are perpetuating this lie, saying that the only choices are shame or doing nothing (or, I guess, like, chemicals or something that magically change CICO), who are doing the thing that doesn't work.
ControlsFreak
3yr ago
You could do the same thing with things seen as straightforwardly bad, like rape. "The problem is lack of consent? So what if one person withdraws consent but the other has no way of knowing, is that wrong? So your problem isn't REALLY lack of consent then, is it?"
This is precisely why people actually go to great efforts to understand and explain what is going on in cases like this. See, for example, the major works of Wertheimer/Westen on consent to sexual relations. I have zero doubt that if you tried this gotcha on them, they would have an immediate thirty second response. I happen to disagree with some of their positions, generally, as I don't believe in a consent-only sexual ethic, but I have no doubt that they have thought about the issue in significant enough detail to be able to easily reply. I think it, frankly, is an indication that a person hasn't sufficiently thought through an issue if they get caught out this easily on it.
Of course, that shouldn't be surprising when it comes to political talking heads. The sheer range of issues they are setting themselves out to address means that they're almost certainly to get caught out sometimes. Think of this general discourse as watching top-tier chess tournaments. The participants may actually have thought about it far more than lay folks, but the game is so incredibly broad, you still regularly see folks just get totally caught out by some opening prep idea. Of course, when that happens and they get embarrassed publicly, they immediately go home and study it to make sure it doesn't happen again. Compare to academic types, who are more like what chess players could get away with in the pre-computer-prep era - the guy who played the same opening every time and just knew it better than you.
I think the lesson we should take often depends on which type of person it is, which type of game they're prepping for, and what the result looks like. Thinking of chess again, in the computer era, even a specialist in an opening can get absolutely wrecked if they get stung with dynamite novel computer prep. But we're not going to see them just get absolutely bamboozled by just some basic shit in an opening that we know they have to have realized was likely.
Rufo is 'prepped' for talking about Marcuse, modern discrimination law, etc. Jefferson is a not-insignificant sideline, but it's definitely a sideline. Iain Anderson? Dude got blown off the board by a beginner who learned like the most common first six moves of the Sicilian.
When it comes to my academic work, I have absolutely already thought about every detail far more intensively than anyone who questions me about it, and I have to regularly go in front of highly-educated people who are not shy in the least about trying to question every aspect that they can think of. I've seen some folks get absolutely blindsided by questions in the past, but those folks are usually either new to a field or just have sub-par work generally. (Academic work, like everything, follows Sturgeon's Law; there are a lot of sub-par academics.)
Worst case, you're dealing with someone whose brain is just completely stuck in a different way of thinking, which can easily happen if you're doing something genuinely novel, especially if the old methods have been established for decades, such that folks have essentially 'grown up' just doing the method, not thinking about it, figuring that all the thinking about it was done decades ago. But if you know this, as Newton would have surely known about his predecessors in detail, it's not too difficult to come up with concrete examples which definitively show that the old methods cannot be blindly applied. This is absolutely a top priority for my own work, refining these examples to their barest, with maximum force against the old way of thinking. It surely was for Newton and others. Many of the major defining moments in science/mathematics are not actually the new method, but the bold, undeniable counterexample demonstrating that the old method is broken. Then follows the new approach.
I have zero doubt that Newton would succeed in this challenge, but that is in part due to what is ultimately the narrowness of academic inquiry.
ControlsFreak
3yr ago
I guess intuition is very powerful and it is not always easily accessible to rational discussion, it quite often leads to wrong conclusions. Which is kind of a point even here in this discussion - you already see how people invent all kinds of defense to this
That is kind of the point. Some people notice that our intuitions clash and retreat into their own aesthetics. Others notice that our intuitions clash and think, "Huh. That's interesting. I wonder why." I happen to think that the latter is a useful endeavor for understanding the underpinnings of our intuitions/aesthetics. It can lead to great works that are clarifying. To refer to a somewhat-related but pretty different topic, there are lots of intuitions/aesthetics around consent to sexual relations. I view works like the books of Wertheimer/Westen to be incredibly valuable discourses that dig in to those intuitions and to try to understand what the hell is going on. I obviously still don't agree with everything they think; they likely don't completely agree with each other. But it fleshes out useful language to explore the cruxes and help navigate the real world where people do just hold various intuitions/aesthetics, and we have to figure out how to come to some agreement on some set of particulars when they arise.
ControlsFreak
3yr ago
I guess if you don't want to even try to get into the details and understand the nature of things, we don't have to. We can just observe that this is one of those moments that highlight Why Cross-Examination Is So Damn Great. We can just see which arguments are theologically held as impervious to scrutiny.
I can't find the direct quote off-hand. But I throw my lot in with Scott when he said (paraphrased), 'Understanding where our intuitions clash is its own reward.'
ControlsFreak
3yr ago
Some differences: 1) She would not be his assistant. 2) The number of blowjobs provided is not any sort of thing the university is involved in (i.e., there is zero amount of, "Hey, ya know, you really ought to blow this guy more often to help us out."). 3) The nature of the relationship is ontologically prior to anything having to do with the business relationship.
Let me ask you about this scenario. Think not a university. An employee at some company says he wants to move away, because his spouse took a job in a different city. He asks to go to remote work. They oblige and extend that benefit in order to retain him as an employee. Do you think that this is the same thing as the company arranging to provide him with some quantity of blowjobs in order to retain him? Do you think it is impermissible for him to negotiate this employment concession?
ControlsFreak
3yr ago
Do you think it is wrong for Superstar Researcher to use his superstar influence to just straightforwardly secure a larger paycheck? Or other terms of employment concessions?
ControlsFreak
3yr ago
This would be a case of a retention policy rather than a hiring policy. I think a lot probably comes down to how "officially" that retention policy is embraced as opposed to whether it's just a secret back room deal made between the "leading" partner and the specific person/people in charge of the hiring.
I'm thinking of an example, a clear, official policy that I've seen in a large organization concerning remote work and retention. It unambiguously said that a factor in deciding whether or not to allow an existing employee to transition to remote work may be retention on the basis of their spouse needing to relocate for their own job. One might complain that this is treating such a person "unfairly" compared to a similar employee who has no such spouse. Nevertheless, it's stated upfront and embraced by the organization's official processes as a mechanism by which they can increase retention of valuable employees. For a university that can't have their star prof working remotely (presumably located at a "lesser" campus of wherever spouse got a job), they'd prefer that their retention policy explicitly allow for a tradeoff of "we can possibly find a way to hire a new spouse as a way to increase retention of high-performing profs".
Of course, it's unlikely that any such retention policy is going to have every detail of how to judge a particular situation completely laid out. It might say that this sort of deal is generally plausible and could be in the interest of the institution, but needs approval up to some level to ensure that it's not an exceedingly flawed deal (e.g., you're not hiring the spouse into some position that they're completely unqualified for or paying them some rate that is just totally unreasonable for the job they're being hired into). I can at least imagine explicit policies/procedures like this which try to get rid of the principle agent problem, specifically by trying to put some distance between the "leading" partner who is benefiting and the authorizing authority. Of course, if the "leading" partner has close personal ties to whoever it is that is named as the approving authority, then one would go back toward considering whether that creates concerns. It's a bit of a delicate balance, but could at least plausibly be done.
ControlsFreak
3yr ago
This reminds me of an experience I had. I was on a cycling trip. We were riding all day, every day. I was eating approximately all of the calories, and I saw that it was good. Then one day, I banged up my knee enough that I was going to have to stop riding, potentially for the remainder of the trip. I realized quickly, "Uhhh, damn, my appetite is still yuge, but I just ain't burning that much anymore." Thankfully, I had a pretty deep experience with counting my calories in the past, so I just forced myself to cut back, basically immediately, all the way to where I would have been without all the activity. Also thankfully, I was still spending all my time with a really positive group that I really liked, so my mood was still good, and I was able to just make the switch without too much agony. I'm exceedingly grateful that I wasn't stuck at home by myself or something, because I can imagine the psychological effects wouldn't have been nearly as pleasant.
I think this is perhaps one of the biggest divides between the people who say, "We're not morally judging; we're just saying that this is reality and that you have to find ways to make plans, enforce those plans, and have a proper support system to succeed," and those who think that the first category is simply morally condemning them. Like, no, I feel like most of us genuinely understand that there are strong psychological factors at play. There are strong psychological factors at play when people like, become alcoholics, too. Lots of people can tell stories of how this or that setback led them to the bottle spiral. I get that. But that it doesn't mean there isn't a path out. It doesn't mean that you have zero agency or ability to climb out of the spiral. Nor does it deny the real physiological damage of alcoholism/obesity or the physical effects that can contribute to the spiral. We just want people to succeed. We want them to win. We want them to learn and to overcome. We don't want them to believe the lie that they are totally and completely helpless in the face of some magical force that like, causes some bodies to consume 500cal/day, feel the physical/psychological effects of being in a deep cut, and yet still somehow gain weight. The more that people tell that lie, the more hopeless they will feel, and the worse the psychological spiral will be.
Now we're cookin'! Do you have an opinion on why Paul Combetta wasn't charged for violating the same law that Mike Flynn was charged for, but in a way that was vastly more flagrant?
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