ControlsFreak
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User ID: 1422
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
I find it interesting that The Motte tends to treat atheism with kid gloves that are not reserved for other belief systems. For example, the idea that there is no difference in intelligence between different genetic groups of humans is widely called out here as being simply wrong. Which it almost certainly is, in my opinion. But consider the idea that methodological constraints actually are a metaphysical theory, or further implying that shoes are atheists. These ideas are, I think, even less likely to be true than the idea that there is no difference in intelligence between different genetic groups of humans (at least the latter can be empirically shown true or false; the former is just a category error). But atheism on The Motte is usually not met with accusations that it is as absurd, indeed perhaps more absurd, as any flavor of wokeism. Nor is the history acknowledged that New/Internet Atheists almost certainly led to a willingness to embrace relativism everywhere and ultimately wokeism by the masses of "laypeople". Wokeism gets often and in my opinion properly pilloried on here for being nonsensical on the level of correspondence to objective reality, but atheism typically gets a free pass. Even the philosophers on here mostly refuse to really call it out as being absurd when the topic comes up.
Does this happen because atheism is largely not viewed as a threat anymore (since its birth of wokeism is already in the past) and because since wokeism is this community's main out-group and atheism is vaguely internet-weirdo-aligned in the modern West, people here tend to follow the principle of "the enemy of an enemy is my friend"? Or, to be more charitable, maybe it is because wokeism can fairly easily be criticized on the level of normal scientific investigation, whereas the claims that atheism makes go so far beyond typical constraints of the scientific method that one actually does just quietly make an exception for it because its claims are fundamentally viewed as being orthogonal to scientific investigation (and people just fail to ever mention such)?
Weight Loss (...yes, again...)
I listen to a variety of podcasts, and I generally do what I can to avoid listening to ads along the way, even if that's just manually skipping ahead through them. But occasionally, my hands are busy with something else, and I just have to deal. In any event, last week, I heard an ad for GOLO, a weight-loss program.
I'm not at 'current episode' on all of my podcasts; I'm listening to back catalog for some of them. I didn't think to go check the date on it, and I don't even remember which podcast it was in at this point, so I don't know if it was a few years old or brand new, but at whatever time it was, they were touting it as a "new approach". Forbes' review of GOLO says 2023 on it, so presumably it's pretty recent.
I was curious about what the Kids These Days are doing, and you may have seen me here before talking about weight loss, so I decided to check it out. I was sooooo ready to hate it. After checking it out, though, in some sense, it actually pleases me a fair amount. In another sense, it illustrates quite well a phenomenon I've been seeing in terms of our society's collective psychology about the topic.
What's GOLO about? From their website... insulin resistance! Muscle loss! These are the bad buzzwords. Metabolic efficiency! Immunity Health! Hormone Balance! These are the good buzzwords. Plus, they have a magic supplement! It's easy! Just take one capsule with each meal. It's in a paragraph that starts with "The Science Behind GOLO", in bold and everything. The Science (TM) is right there! They even shit on CICO, helpfully pointing out in all caps:
YOU DON’T NEED TO COUNT CALORIES, COUNT POINTS OR FOLLOW AN APP. THE TRUTH IS, LOW-CALORIE, LOW-FAT APPROACHES DON’T WORK.
Let's dive in, see what's really going on. Obvious first place to start is their supplement; what's in it? 7 plant extracts and 3 minerals, of which, best as I can tell, chromium is the star of their show. Of course, best as science can tell, there is just the barest degree of plausibility, and Examine concludes by pointing out:
Anyone wishing to supplement chromium should be aware that chromium supplementation is not associated with any reliable benefits on markers of glucose metabolism.
Ok, so if their magic suppliment isn't exactly Ozempic, what do they have going on? Gotta dig into 'More Information' on their site.... then be careful! Don't fall into the trap of clicking on any of the distractions, even the one that promises to tell you what their 'GOLO For Life Plan' is. Gotta go to the FAQ. That's where you've gotta dig down into the question about what the GOLO For Life Plan is. It helpfully states:
The GOLO For Life Plan combines the right foods together to help manage and optimize glucose and insulin levels while creating a thermogenic effect. The GOLO For Life Plan improves weight loss in two ways:
- Minimizing or eliminating muscle loss and maximizing fat loss
- Providing proper nutrition that includes healthy fats and carbohydrates which eliminates nutritional imbalances and promotes steady weight loss and better health.
On the GOLO For Life Plan, you can eat more food and lose weight without the obstacles you may have faced with other diets.You will be eating between 1300 and 1800 calories each day, and will:
- Stay full and energized
- Keep insulin steady throughout the day
- Give your body proper nutrition
- Reduce hunger and cravings
- Learn how to eat to promote weight loss
- Learn how to maintain your weight when you reach your goals
I tried to be helpful and cross out all the noise that isn't relevant for us at this point. What is the real key to a fancy new diet for weight loss that has all the buzzwords that people use when they say that CICO is garbage? It was CICO all along! There are more telltale signs that this is just a recycling of what we've known for a long time. 1300-1800 is a pretty wide range, so what's going on? Two more items further down in the FAQ, under How is the GOLO For Life Plan Personalized?, we see:
The GOLO For Life Plan is based on your energy needs. We help you determine the right amount of food that you need, to lose on average, 1-2 pounds per week.
That Forbes article fills in some more details:
While everyone has the same food guidelines, your specific caloric intake recommendation is based on your gender, age, current weight and activity level.
The government of Canada has helpfully published basically exactly this sort of thing on their website for years. We've known how to do this for years. Weknowdis. Moreover, the real, actual science has confirmed for decades that to a pretty darn good level of approximation, 500cal/day from your TDEE is right about a 1lb/wk weight loss/gain. Weknowdis.
Forbes says, "Programs range from 30 to 90 days," but I can't find solid details on the GOLO website. Most of the examples are people who did stuff for 6mo-1yr. Best I can tell, they're basically just selling the supplement, and then I guess giving away the meal planning to put you in the right calorie range. So, for a bit, with the Forbes wording, I was wondering if they were actually going to have some trick to try to get you to do it for 1-3mo, then 'cycle off', but try to figure out how to get you to just go back to maintenance caloric intake, then say that you should start another 1-3mo cycle. Maybe that's buried somewhere in the planning tool they're giving away with every purchase of the supplement. Final thing to point out, which I couldn't really find in detail on the GOLO site, Forbes says:
GOLO also provides eating guidelines, encouraging you to eat more whole foods (including fruits, vegetables, meats, eggs and grains) while avoiding sugar and processed foods.
In the end, what have they done here? It actually almost makes me proud of capitalism. They've found a way to package and monetize the bog standard, traditional advice for losing weight. You could just listen to the CICO people, the honest doctors, the fitness people, etc., who tell you the same basic advice. Stop eating total crap like piles of dessert all the time. Stop drinking big gulps of straight sugar calories, no matter whether they're soda, juice, or whatever other trendy beverage is happening right now. Eat at about a 500cal/day deficit to shoot for 1lb/wk of weight loss, eat regular foods, and maybe if you're feeling physical/psychological effects after getting somewhat deep into a cut, go back to maintenance for a bit, and then start again.
But the packaging. Ohhhh the packaging! Insulin resistance! Metabolic efficiency! Immunity Health! Hormone Balance! CICO SUCKS! They do what they can to try to meet people where they are. To try to get them used to the idea that they're shooting for about a pound a week, so it'll be longer than other people promise (though, of course, they say 1-2lb/wk, just to get your brain to think it could be twice as fast). And of course, the cherry on top, a supplement that probably doesn't really do anything is the mechanism by which they monetize. Hell, after people lose the weight, I bet the GOLO For Life thing basically steers them toward how to stay at maintenance for the rest of time... but you probably better keep buying/taking their supplement, just to make sure you don't ruin all your gainz! It's a thing of sheer beauty, designed to bob and weave around all the CICO bashers who are going to scream from the rooftops that CICO doesn't work and trash your weight loss program if it even hints at the idea that CICO is what's going on rather than repeating the buzzwords and bowing at the god of, "It's not your fault, it's... check cue card... insulin resistance!"
In the end, I can't help but love it. Could you have listened to me tell you basically all the same underlying facts? Sure. Could you find a plethora of communities or official government public health documents that outline how you can do all this same stuff, but for free? Yup. But man, we're too dry in the delivery, and we tend to be abrasive to the folks who want to believe that there is some other magic going on in the world. I can't help but think of how Matt Levine might put it. The market wants the bog standard advice that works and that is backed by science, but it also doesn't want it to sound like that. It wants to hear some buzzwords, platitudes, shitting on CICO, and having a magic supplement. That's an arbitrage opportunity, and GOLO seems to have filled it.
EDIT: Sigh, I tried so hard to get the strikethroughs to work inside the bulletpoints. It displays correctly in the comment preview (and still displays correctly in the preview as I'm editing). But it's broken in the actual comment. @ZorbaTHut Help?
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
Russ Roberts talks about how inserting money into things can change the culture around said thing. The example he often goes to is that of day care centers. Some day care centers had a problem with parents picking up their children late (i.e., they were supposed to be all picked up by 6pm or whatever so that the center could close at that time). In order to try to fix the problem, they implemented a late pickup fee. People follow incentives and will then do a better job of picking up their children, right? Whelp, the result was that the number of late pickups went up.
Prior to the fee, parents had a cultural incentive to try to pick up their kids on time. 'I would feel bad if I was late and the workers at the center had to stay later than planned.' After the fee, a person could reasonably believe, 'Well, they set the fee at a rate that appropriately compensates them for the trouble, so as long as it's worth it to me to pay the fee, everyone wins.' And so the culture around how people viewed their choices changed; parents apparently valued not being rude (in the prior regime) more than paying the fee (in the current regime) more than picking up their kids on time... and so late pickups went up.
There have been a lot of discussions lately about financial incentives to have kids. I'd like to finally share an experience I had recently with my wife. We were on a trip in the southern US, and we happened to be out at a restaurant for breakfast on a Sunday morning. The place was pretty busy, and there were a lot of families there with little children. These kids were pretty much all quite well-behaved, and the families seemed pretty happy.
...the sight of this was apparently a crying experience for my wife. Parents actually like their kids?! They're all able to enjoy a nice breakfast out and have just an all-around pleasant morning?! What even is this world?!
You see, my wife immigrated from Canada, where they pretty straightforwardly pay people for having children. The payments are relatively substantial. Her sister is a prime example. Sister doesn't work; sister's husband works a pretty low-paying entry-level job, without a whole lot of hope in sight for significant advances anytime soon; sister and her husband already have two children, will probably be having more. Wife basically thinks that sister is just an example of a phenomenon that she thinks is common in her home country - people basically treating their kids as sources of income.
When I told wife about Hungary's schemes that have been talked about here, she immediately started thinking about how people would game it, how they'd make choices to just barely satisfy the governmental requirements, and how it would change the culture around how people view these choices. She also has gobs of experience with how employees game out the parental leave time and unemployment and so on, so she knows the way these games will be played (she's already confident that many people make choices of how to space out their kids based on how much leave you get, then how many hours you need to work again before you become eligible for another huge chunk of parental leave; you can string along several years of barely working at all if you do it right). "So, around 28-29, every woman will be figuring out when the best time is to hit up a sperm bank, given their job situation and ensuring a high probability of it working prior to 30."
I'm not going to confidently predict that there is going to be some particular unintended consequence (e.g., maybe people who might have otherwise had more than one kid just have their "gov't mandated, sperm bank one", they hate the thing, and overall fertility declines). But hot damn am I sure that there will be some unintended consequences to the culture around having kids if people go to some of the extremes of the financial incentives talked about here. Like, yes, injecting money will produce incentives that will change behavior. Will the resulting behavior be something that we like? Ohhhhh boy. We're in for a wild ride. Mostly, I'm sort of just amazed that this group generally leans right and would be incredibly quick to point out the possibility of unintended consequences for vast social engineering schemes proposed by the left, but is relatively uncritical about possible unintended consequences for vast social engineering schemes proposed to increase fertility.
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
This is a very common failure to think on the margin; it most typically shows up when people are discussing drug prohibition. Yes, we all agree that prohibiting drugs/CP/murder is not going to actually eliminate it. Some people are still going to find a way to get drugs/CP or to murder other people. These are known as "high-value users". There are some people who will go to extreme measures to get that next hit, get that next picture, or to kill that one bastard. They may do so even if we make the (potential) costs high. (Note that there are some differences in effect of increasing direct costs vs potential costs, though legal sanctions can affect both.)
You may personally be a high-value CP user. We have high-value drug users in these threads. I don't know that we've had high-value murderers in these threads, but they do exist. We may not be successful in dissuading you from pursuing what you value so highly. We may or may not catch you and actually impose the potential costs. The societal value of making such laws does not hinge on that. This has been known for centuries.
Setting aside the other possible justifications for punishing you, specifically, there is societal value in increasing the costs for others, who might have a somewhat lower-value on the behavior than you do, perhaps to the point that they simply choose not to engage in the behavior. This comes in the form of people thinking, "Yeah, I kinda like kids, but do I really want to go to all the trouble of figuring out these VPNs, cryptocurrencies, etc., and then still run the risk of getting caught? Probably not," or, "Yeah, I kinda like drugs, but do I really want to go to all the trouble to deal with the criminal culture, pay high prices, and still run the risk of getting caught or getting an adulterated product that may kill me? I guess I'll just drink some whisky," or, "Yeah, I super super hate this guy, and if anyone ought to get killed, it's him, but do I really want to go through the trouble of trying to plan out how to do it without getting trivially caught, yet still run the risk of something going wrong and ending up behind bars for the rest of my life? Probably not."
Some people will ask themselves those questions and answer, "Yes, absolutely," instead of, "Probably not." But in the meantime, we'll have a lot less CP, a lot less drug usage, and a lot less murder. For the few of you who go ahead and do it, we can figure out what mix of the other justifications for punishment will be most beneficial to you and society.
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
Isn't the availability of fictional sexualized content of children like lolicon one of the methods you speak of to increase costs of CP consumption (as it's less justifiable and thus more costly to pursue it at risk if there's a semi-decent substitute with far less risk attached)?
There's no economic argument for how it would increase the cost of CP consumption. It simply lessens the cost of something that some might consider a substitute.
In any event, another thing about drug prohibition is that science/society has basically no clue what actually causes the transition to being an addict (which usually comes with many harms, to oneself and others). Obviously, we know that if you never try a drug, you don't become an addict. Some portion of folks who try don't become addicted, but some portion does (this can happen via an intermediate, legal drug, too, like prescription opioids). Best as we can tell, it's pretty much a Poisson process. That means that it scales with the number of people who start using. Also, once a person transitions to being an addict, it seems that we have basically no clue how to rehabilitate them. (See Scott's old old old post about how abysmal rehab programs are.) There is a very reasonable end conclusion that we should simply reduce the number of initial users. It just seems implausible that we could flood the market with cheap, legal opioids and somehow not cause some folks to get addicted.
Similarly, lots of folks find it pretty implausible that we can flood the market with cheap fake child porn and not cause some number of people, who wouldn't have ever even started wanking down that path, to end up abusing kids.
IF we could just isolate people who were already going to consume CP and, in a targeted fashion, with no spillover effects, provide fake CP as a substitute, then sure, that'd be a plausible thing to try. That would be the like, "Give people methadone at rehab," kind of solution, not the, "Give out prescription opioids like candy to the masses," kind of solution.
Almost all CP is distributed freely so you would almost never have to figure this out unless you want really new/rare/etc. stuff.
I would be interested to know more about how this works. Seems like great risk to share, and so folks would want something in return. The indictments I have read support this, as most sites in those indictments make access contingent on regularly uploading fresh content.
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
If competitor A lowers its price from $10 to $5, then competitor B still at $10 costs more (again relatively, but that's how people reason) even though it hasn't changed its price at all.
No. This is econ 101. In fact, in the most simplistic case of substitutes, the price of B actually goes down. There is literally no sense in which its price goes up. ("Relatively" doesn't count.)
if there were more widespread distribution of (fake or otherwise) positive/indulgent depictions of the brutal murder of puppies, do you think people would:
A. be horrified or at least strongly disapprove of it, no matter how long this campaign went on.
B. be slowly convinced via exposure that maybe murdering puppies might be fun.
You present this as if it would be an advertising campaign. That probably wouldn't work, but that's not how it would work, anyway. What would work is slowly normalizing it through the marginal people. The ones who are already a little off, a little predisposed to violence and weird, twisted shit. And if you forcibly make the people who want to shut that down desist (while simultaneously running a propaganda campaign in universities about how we should maybe be more sensitive to the reasonable needs of such people), then you're brewing a recipe for disaster.
So yeah, if we flood the market with cheap puppy murder, we're going to get more puppy murder. Some people will obviously be horrified, but so long as your propaganda campaign can at least prevent them from taking political action against the flood of cheap puppy murder, we're gonna get more puppy murder. I don't understand how else you can possibly think this would work.
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
So if Wendy's halves its prices, then the relative cost of choosing McDonald's instead doesn't go up?
"Relative" doesn't count. The cost of McDonald's stays the same or possibly goes down in response.
I'm not sure what "econ 101" you took (certainly not the same as mine)
Did you literally just skip the part of the course on substitute goods?
it has zero relevance to how people actually behave in the real world.
"Igneous rocks are fucking bullshit." It always surprises me to see that people willingly choose to just deny the mathematics of economics when it conflicts with their political commitments. It probably shouldn't, but it still does.
If both taboos are equally ripe for normalization
Who claimed this? I didn't.
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
The relative cost
What happens to the actual cost?
original point of the analogy "McDonald's" actually represents real child porn here, which is legally incapable of lowering its "cost/price" (in terms of risk etc.) on its own initiative
This is not true. There are a whole host of things that can be done. Not least of which is to frustrate legal sanctions through the difficulty of distinguishing real from fake.
Who claimed this? I didn't.
To me, you seemed to be claiming it. In any case I'm glad we agree then.
Making up a position that I never claimed and then seeing that I don't claim it does not imply that we agree.
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
What happens to the "actual" (that is, nominal/explicit) cost/price of something in the case of 5000000000% inflation?
I mean, if you want to posit a completely different scenario than one where the cost of a substitute good is decreased, we could ask that question and try to find an answer. There may or may not be one, and it may be either direction or zero, but it's not going to be relevant for the question at hand. IN THIS DISCUSSION, we're talking about a scenario where the cost of a substitute good is decreased. What happens to the actual cost of the good?
There is a very basic, very clear economics answer to this question, squarely within the domain of proper economic scholarship. Why are you simply avoiding addressing the relevant question?
The PROTECT Act of 2003
Sure. You're proposing that we institute a new policy regime, which likely would have impacts to the viability of such things.
Well I'm afraid you may have to restate your position then.
You can reread my comments if you'd like. Right now, I'm just trying to get a simple economics answer to a simple economics question. You confused yourself by going off on some random tangent about some random claim that you made up and which I never made.
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
Why do you refuse to admit that the absolute is not as relevant as the relative?
Because I have a point about absolute that we can't get to, because you keep avoiding acknowledging basic economic facts.
I've already admitted the absolute value doesn't change many times
Have you acknowledged that it either doesn't change or goes down? In fact, it almost always goes down. Just admit this painfully obviously true tiny little fact about economics, and we can move on.
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
Whelp, if child porn is magically immune to economics, then we're probably not going to get very far. This is a very common failure mode for people; it happens a lot in drug prohibition discussions, too. (It does undercut your claim that we can analyze the outcome through first-order substitute goods/relative price analysis, though.)
In any event, I think we're pretty much done here. We've found the root of the disagreement. You think CP is immune to economics; I don't. There's probably not much more to say. I mean, I suppose I could say that I think I'm right. Lots of academic economists have very successfully applied traditional economic principles to a variety of black market goods, things that don't have a Black Market Goods Inc. engaging in free market competition. I find those works often persuasive.
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
the real extra "cost" of child porn above eroticized content of fictional children like lolicon is actually its illegality/extra taboo/difficulty to access, which no creator of child porn can simply alter or abolish in order to try to "compete" with substitutes (like a producer of normal goods might simply lower actual prices).
Lots of academic economists have very successfully applied traditional economic principles to a variety of black market goods, things that don't have a Black Market Goods Inc. engaging in free market competition. I find those works often persuasive.
If it were simply a matter of actually lowering actual prices (which it's not because in reality both almost all lolicon and all real child porn are already distributed entirely for free)
Costs to consumers are not identical to a dollar figure charged.
there are many standard economic analyses of illegal goods like drugs, illegal guns, etc., but unfortunately those fall apart in the case of child porn as it's a purely non-physical good.
And apparently, all non-physical goods are now immune to economic analysis. Wow.
The part where the real thing changes its absolute cost/price ... in response to any of this doesn't happen ..., because that cost/price is imposed by policy...
Yeah, costs that are attempted to be imposed by policy are not magically immune from affecting the cost borne by different parties in different ways when markets shift. It's this type of reasoning that makes people think, "Just put a price cap/floor on it! That'll fix everything by... fixing the price... imposing it by policy. Supply and demand won't matter anymore, and there will be no adjustment in the market!" It doesn't work like this, here or with any other black market good.
the root of our disagreement is not that I believe that anything is immune from economic analysis
Then why have you again provided another attemped reason for why it's immune from economic analysis?
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
they also tend to incorporate a policy-oriented lens such as public choice theory....
When analyzing things like how policy is made, sure. We're asking questions about prices/quantities, given some results of those things. This is a commonly done thing for many black-market goods.
you can't apply the same economic analyses that you would apply to physical goods to non-physical goods, which is absolutely true. You wouldn't download an illegal silencer.
Correct-ish. You do actually apply the same economic analysis. There are just some quantities in there that are different (MC=0 is the main one). Economists didn't just quit and go home ("Guess we can't perform economic analysis anymore") after the digital revolution happened. They analyzed the new situations, using pretty much the same tools.
I don't actually think there are any good economic analyses of them (that I'm aware of) because in most cases just learning about them (by observing their circulation in action)
That would be econometric (which, frankly, doesn't even require physical possession, if you design your study well). We can still apply basic economic theory to make predictions without observing literal child porn. You were trying to do this at one point, too... before you decided that CP was immune to economics.
If you can find me the work of an economist, sociologist, or some other academic who has actually personally violated child porn law
Not needed; as above. I'm not going to go look for it now, because it's not worth it for an economics-denier (you'll find some reason to deny it), but on related scores, I'm 100% confident that I've seen economic analysis (and econometric analysis) of illegal drugs and guns, without any academic personally violating gun/drug laws. There is zero reason, in principle, why an academic could not for example partner up with NCMEC to get access to decent-quality data without personally violating any laws.
I simply pointed out which form of economic analysis is applicable
No, you just baldly asserted that one thing (that you like) is applicable, but literally the rest of economics is magically inapplicable. You have not reasoned for it.
Anyway you are back to being obtuse, intentionally ignoring the main thrusts of my argument while snarking at snippets taken out of context to imply they express something that they don't. You do realize that this behavior is just making it more and more transparent that you don't have much of a real point and just want to argue to argue, right?
STATUS GAMES
When people talk about "status games" 'round these parts, they're normally referring to our obsession with relative social status and the games that we play in order to increase it. However, this morning, I listened to oral arguments in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, a case about a municipal ordinance, from a town in Oregon, prohibiting people from sleeping in public, at least with some 'aggravating' factor, like having a blanket. Of course, as is probably traditional for me at this point, I hardly even want to talk about the specifics of this case, at least not concerning homelessness. Instead, I'd like to jump off into questions of categories (which, uh, I guess are made for man?), agency, and the games we play with categories like 'status'.
The background is a 1962 case, Robinson v. California, referred to in all blockquotes from the Court as just "Robinson", which considered
A California statute makes it a misdemeanor punishable by imprisonment for any person to "be addicted to the use of narcotics," and, in sustaining petitioner's conviction thereunder, the California courts construed the statute as making the "status" of narcotic addiction a criminal offense for which the offender may be prosecuted "at any time before he reforms," even though he has never used or possessed any narcotics within the State and has not been guilty of any antisocial behavior there.
SCOTUS held:
As so construed and applied, the statute inflicts a cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments.
Details aren't the most important, but a vague sense of that backdrop is. If someone is "addicted to narcotics", that's considered just a "status", not actual behavior or conduct that can be regulated by the state.
This status/conduct categorical divide has a long history of being quite confusing, and this confusion was on full display at the Court. A Ctrl+F of the transcript shows 121 mentions of the word "status", and many of them are trying to figure out what counts. I collected more blockquotes than I could possibly clean up or feel comfortable bombarding TheMotte with, so I'll try to be sparing. First off, Justice Kagan asking questions of Ms. Evangelis, who is arguing on behalf of the city:
JUSTICE KAGAN: So can I talk about that, Ms. Kapur? So taking Robinson as a given, could you criminalize the status of homelessness?
MS. EVANGELIS: Well, I have a couple points to that.
JUSTICE KAGAN: It's just a simple question.
MS. EVANGELIS: So Robinson doesn't address that and I think it's completely distinguishable. So Robinson was a --
JUSTICE KAGAN: Could you criminalize the status of homelessness?
MS. EVANGELIS: Well, I don't think that homelessness is a status like drug addiction, and Robinson only stands for that.
JUSTICE KAGAN: Well, homelessness is a status. It's the status of not having a home.
MS. EVANGELIS: I actually -- I disagree with that, Justice Kagan, because it is so fluid, it's so different. People experiencing homelessness might be one day without shelter, the next day with. The federal definition contemplates various forms.
JUSTICE KAGAN: At the period with which -- in the period where -- where you don't have a home and you are homeless, is that a status?
MS. EVANGELIS: No.
There is a bit of meandering that I'll omit, but it comes back to:
MS. EVANGELIS: The statute does not say anything about homelessness. It's a generally applicable law. One more -- it -- it's very important that it applies to everyone, even --
JUSTICE KAGAN: Yeah, I -- I got that.
MS. EVANGELIS: -- people who are camping.
JUSTICE KAGAN: But it's a single person with a blanket.
MS. EVANGELIS: And --
JUSTICE KAGAN: You don't have to have a tent. You don't have to have a camp. It's a single person with a blanket.
MS. EVANGELIS: And sleeping in conduct is considered -- excuse me, sleeping in public is considered conduct. And this Court -- this Court in Clark discussed that, that that is conduct. Also, the federal regulations --
JUSTICE KAGAN: Well, sleeping is --
MS. EVANGELIS: -- are very --
JUSTICE KAGAN: -- a biological necessity. It's sort of like breathing. I mean, you could say breathing is conduct too, but, presumably, you would not think that it's okay to criminalize breathing in public.
MS. EVANGELIS: I would like to point to the federal regulations which I brought up.
JUSTICE KAGAN: And for a homeless person who has no place to go, sleeping in public is kind of like breathing in public.
and finally:
JUSTICE KAGAN: -- I'll tell you the truth, Ms. Kapur. I think that this is -- this is a super-hard policy problem for all municipalities. And if you were to come in here and you were to say, you know, we need certain protections to keep our streets safe and we can't have, you know, people sleeping anyplace that they want and we can't have, you know, tent cities cropping up, I mean, that would create one set of issues. But your ordinance goes way beyond that. Your ordinance says as to a person -- and I understand that you think it's generally applicable, but we only come up with this problem for a person who is homeless, who has the status of homelessness, who has no other place to sleep, and your statute says that person cannot take himself and himself only and, you know, can't take a blanket and sleep someplace without it being a crime. And -- and -- and that's, you know -- well, it just seems like Robinson. It seems like you're criminalizing a status.
Kagan may be the smartest of the liberal Justices, so it's probably no surprise that I think she got the closest to a conceptualization of status that is friendly to the left in this case. Unsurprisingly, though, "Republicans Pounce". Justice Gorsuch said that, "[T]he distinction between status and conduct is a slippery one and that they're often closely related," and had what was perhaps the most comprehensive exchange on the topic with Mr. Kneedler, who is the Deputy Solicitor General, weighing in on the case on behalf of the federal government, who was technically supporting neither party, but is obviously in practice representing the equities of the Biden administration portion of the left.
JUSTICE GORSUCH: Mr. Kneedler, I want to probe this a little bit further because it -- it does seem to me the status/conduct distinction is very tricky. And I had thought that Robinson, after Powell, really was just limited to status. And now you're saying, well, there's some conduct that's effectively equated to status and -- but you're saying involuntary drug use, you can regulate that conduct. That doesn't qualify as status. You're saying compulsive alcohol use, you can regulate that conduct in public. Public drunkenness, even if it's involuntary, that doesn't qualify as status, right?
MR. KNEEDLER: Right.
JUSTICE GORSUCH: You're saying you can regulate somebody who is hungry and has no other choice but to steal. You can regulate that conduct even though it's a basic human necessity, and that doesn't come under the -- under the status side of the line, right?
MR. KNEEDLER: Yes.
JUSTICE GORSUCH: Okay. But, when it comes to homelessness, which is a terribly difficult problem, you're saying that's different and -- because there are no beds available for them to go to in Grants Pass. What -- what about someone who has a mental health problem that prohibits them -- they cannot sleep in -- in a shelter. Are they allowed to sleep outside or not? Is that status or conduct that's regulable?
MR. KNEEDLER: I -- I think the -- the question would be whether that shelter is available.
JUSTICE GORSUCH: It's available.
MR. KNEEDLER: Well, no, available to the individual.
JUSTICE GORSUCH: It's available to the individual.
MR. KNEEDLER: But --
JUSTICE GORSUCH: It's just because of their mental health problem, they cannot do it.
MR. KNEEDLER: I -- I think there might be -- I mean, that's -- the mental health problem --
JUSTICE GORSUCH: Status or conduct?
MR. KNEEDLER: The mental health situation is itself a status.
JUSTICE GORSUCH: Right, I know that.
MR. KNEEDLER: Yes. But -- but if the
JUSTICE GORSUCH: It has this further knock-on effect on conduct. Is that regulable
MR. KNEEDLER: I -- I --
JUSTICE GORSUCH: -- by the state or not?
MR. KNEEDLER: -- I -- I think that -- I think if the --
JUSTICE GORSUCH: All the -- you know, alcohol, drug use --
MR. KNEEDLER: Right, right.
JUSTICE GORSUCH: -- they have problems too and that that -- and -- and -- but you're saying that conduct is regulable. How about with respect to this pervasive problem of -- of persons with mental health problems?
MR. KNEEDLER: I -- I think, in a particular situation, if the -- if the -- if the person would engage in violent conduct as --
JUSTICE GORSUCH: No, no, no, don't mess with my hypothetical, counsel.
(Laughter.)
JUSTICE GORSUCH: I like my hypothetical. I know you don't. It's a hard one, and that's why I'm asking it. I'm just trying to understand --
MR. KNEEDLER: I -- I --
JUSTICE GORSUCH: -- the limits of your line.
MR. KNEEDLER: I think it would depend on how serious the offense was on the -- on the individual.
JUSTICE GORSUCH: It's -- it's -- it's a very serious effect. The mental health problem is serious, but there are beds available.
MR. KNEEDLER: Well, what I was trying to say, it would depend on how serious being required in -- to -- to go into that facility was on the person's mental -- if it would make his mental health situation a lot worse, then that may not be something that's --
JUSTICE GORSUCH: So that's status -- that falls on the status side?
MR. KNEEDLER: Well, I -- I -- I -- I guess you could put it that way, but I -- I guess what I'm saying is that --
JUSTICE GORSUCH: I -- that's what I'm wondering. I don't -- I'm asking you.
MR. KNEEDLER: Well -- JUSTICE GORSUCH: I really am just trying to figure out --
MR. KNEEDLER: No. You could view that as status or --
JUSTICE GORSUCH: You're asking us to extend Robinson, and I'm asking how far?
MR. KNEEDLER: Well, what I was going to say, you could -- you could think of it as status, but I think another way to think about it, and this is our point about an individualized determination, is that place realistically available to that person because --
JUSTICE GORSUCH: It is in the sense that the bed is available --
MR. KNEEDLER: I know that it's --
JUSTICE GORSUCH: -- but not because of their personal circumstances.
MR. KNEEDLER: Right. Right. And that's -- and that's my point. It -- it's available in a physical sense. It may be available to somebody else, but requiring an individualized determination might include whether that person could cope in that setting. That's the only --
JUSTICE GORSUCH: So that -- so that might be an Eighth Amendment violation?
MR. KNEEDLER: Because it may not -- yes, because it's not available.
JUSTICE GORSUCH: So that's an -- it's an Eighth Amendment violation to require people to access available beds in the jurisdiction in which they live because of their mental health problems?
MR. KNEEDLER: If -- if going there would -- would --
JUSTICE GORSUCH: How about if they have a substance abuse problem and they can't use those substances in the shelter? Is that an Eighth Amendment --
MR. KNEEDLER: That is -- that is not a -- that is not a sufficient --
JUSTICE GORSUCH: Why? Why? They're addicted to drugs, they cannot use them in the shelter. That's one of the rules.
MR. KNEEDLER: Well, if they -- if they -- if it's the shelter's rule, then they have no -- they -- they -- they can't go there if they're -- if they're addicted. That's not -- that's not --
JUSTICE GORSUCH: So that's an Eighth -- that's an Eighth Amendment violation?
MR. KNEEDLER: Well, no, the -- the -- the Eighth Amendment violation is prohibiting sleeping outside because the only shelter that is available --
JUSTICE GORSUCH: Is not really available to that person?
MR. KNEEDLER: -- won't take them -- won't take them, yes. And that's an individualized determination.
JUSTICE GORSUCH: Same thing with the alcoholic?
MR. KNEEDLER: Yes.
JUSTICE GORSUCH: Okay. So the alcoholic has an Eighth Amendment right to sleep outside even though there's a bed available?
MR. KNEEDLER: If -- if the only shelter in town won't take him, then I think he's in exactly -- he's in the same -- he's in the same condition. And there can be all sorts of reasons, and the City doesn't normally --
...
JUSTICE GORSUCH: How about if there are no public bathroom facilities? Can -- do people have an Eighth Amendment right to defecate and urinate outdoors?
MR. KNEEDLER: No, we -- we --
JUSTICE GORSUCH: Is that conduct or is that status?
MR. KNEEDLER: I -- it's, obviously, there -- there is conduct there and we are not suggesting that cities can't enforce their --
JUSTICE GORSUCH: Why not, if there are no public facilities available to homeless persons?
MR. KNEEDLER: The -- the -- that situation, you know, candidly, has never arisen. And whether or not there -- I mean, in the litigation as I've seen. But no one is suggesting and we're not suggesting that public urination and defecation laws cannot be enforced because there are very substantial public health reasons for that.
JUSTICE GORSUCH: Well, there are substantial public health reasons with drug use, with alcohol, and with all these other things too.
MR. KNEEDLER: And they can all be --
JUSTICE GORSUCH: And you're saying the Eighth Amendment overrides those. Why not in this circumstance right now?
MR. KNEEDLER: No, I'm not -- I'm not saying the Eighth Amendment overrides the laws against drug use.
JUSTICE GORSUCH: Oh, I know that.
MR. KNEEDLER: Oh, I'm sorry.
JUSTICE GORSUCH: I know that.
MR. KNEEDLER: No, I misunderstood what you --
JUSTICE GORSUCH: That one -- that one the government wants to keep. I got that.
MR. KNEEDLER: No, I misunderstood your question. Sorry.
JUSTICE GORSUCH: Yeah. Last one. How about -- how about fires outdoors? I know you say time, place, and manner, but is there an Eighth Amendment right to cook outdoors?
MR. KNEEDLER: No. I -- I -- I -- I think what -- what --
JUSTICE GORSUCH: That's -- that's an incident -- a human necessity every person has to do.
MR. KNEEDLER: But this -- but this is one -- this is one of those things that, you know, is taken care of on the ground as a practical matter. There are restaurants where someone can go. There are --
JUSTICE GORSUCH: Well, no, no, we're talking about homeless people.
MR. KNEEDLER: No.
JUSTICE GORSUCH: They're not going to go spend money at a restaurant necessarily. Let's --
MR. KNEEDLER: Well, there -- there may be inexpensive places. Some people get --
JUSTICE GORSUCH: Let's say there isn't, okay?
MR. KNEEDLER: And --
JUSTICE GORSUCH: Let's say that there is no reasonable --
MR. KNEEDLER: And -- and the local community --
JUSTICE GORSUCH: Do they have a right to cook? They have a right to eat, don't they?
MR. KNEEDLER: They have -- they have a right to eat, a right to cook if it entails having a fire, which I think it -- it -- it probably -- it probably would, but -- but, as I said, the -- the -- the eating, the feeding is taken care of in most communities by nonprofits and churches stepping forward --
JUSTICE GORSUCH: But if there isn't
MR. KNEEDLER: -- as they have for 200 years.
JUSTICE GORSUCH: -- but, if there isn't, there's an Eighth Amendment right to have a fire?
MR. KNEEDLER: No, no, we are not saying there's an Eighth Amendment --
JUSTICE GORSUCH: Well, I thought you just said there was.
MR. KNEEDLER: Well, there -- there's food that you can eat without cooking it. I mean, they -- and they could could get a handout from the -- from a -- from an individual that, you know, people can beg for money. I mean, there are -- there are ways that this works out in practice.
Oof, that was long and covered a lot. Gorsuch would go on to suggest that the Court should just push the case back the State for a "necessity" analysis and not "get into the status/conduct stuff that -- that Robinson seems to invite." Roberts, meanwhile, went after immutability in a colloquy with Ms. Corkran, representing the class of homeless people challenging the law.
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: A number of us, I think, are having difficulty with the distinction between status and conduct. You'll acknowledge, won't you, that in those terms, there's a difference between being addicted to drugs and being homeless? In other words, someone who's homeless can immediately become not homeless, right, if they find shelter.
Someone who is addicted to drugs, it's not so -- so easy. It seems to me that in Robinson, it's much easier to understand the drug addiction as an ongoing status, while, here, I think it is different because you can move into and out of and into and out of the status, as you would put it, as being homeless.
MS. CORKRAN: Yeah. So it's interesting, we today understand addiction as an immutable status. In Robinson, the Court suggested that someone might be recovered and no longer have the status of addiction. So the Robinson Court wasn't thinking about addiction as something that couldn't change over time.
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Well, that may limit the applicability of Robinson to a different situation, but what is the -- I mean, what is the analytic approach to deciding whether something's a status or a situation of conduct?
MS. CORKRAN: So the question is a status is something that a person is when they're not doing anything. So being addicted, having cancer, being poor, are all statuses that you have apart from any conduct.
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Having cancer is not the same as being homeless, right? I mean, maybe I'm just repeating myself because homelessness can -- you -- you can remove the homeless status in an instant if you move to a shelter or situations otherwise change. And, of course, it can be moved the other way as well if you're kicked out of the shelter or whatever. So that is a distinction from all these other things that have been labeled status, isn't it?
MS. CORKRAN: I -- I don't think so because, you know, a cancer patient can go into remission, they no longer have that status. I don't think -- I mean, I don't think there's any question that being poor is a status. It's something you are apart from anything you do. It's a status that can change over time, and at that point, you wouldn't be a part of the class, but I don't think it changes the fact that it is a status. And what Robinson found so offensive about status-based conduct --
But it would take Justice Jackson to blow up our first real bombshell of the argument, following up on the Roberts' discussion of immutability:
JUSTICE JACKSON: Can a person go from being addicted to drugs to not being addicted to drugs?
MS. CORKRAN: So I think under common -- as we think about it in terms of modern medicine, the answer is no. But the Robinson Court certainly thought that was the case, right? Sixty years ago, we didn't have the same understanding of addiction as we do now.
JUSTICE JACKSON: So your view of Robinson is that it doesn't really matter, the permanency of the condition; it's still a status?
MS. CORKRAN: Right. The Robinson Court did not think that the permanency mattered because it thought that addiction was a status that could change.
In summary, the Robinson Court was actually wrong on the facts. They thought that people could go from being addicted to drugs to not being addicted to drugs. So, they clearly didn't care all that much about permanency. But BOOM goes the claim that, apparently the New Correct Lefty Science has determined that people don't ever transition from being addicted to drugs to not being addicted to drugs. I guess I heard it here first. My years of shouting at clouds that Scott pointed out that basically all honest alcoholism rehabilitation studies fail to outperform a placebo and that narcotics rehabilitation studies don't even use measures like "stops taking narcotics" in favor of measures like "causes trouble for other people while using narcotics somewhat less often" is finally being adopted! (Frankly, in far stronger form that I would have even stated. I wouldn't say that people can't stop being addicted to drugs; just that we can't magically impose a "treatment" regime that is going to result in them stopping.) Wow! Was the failure of Oregon's decriminalization experiment so spectacular that we're no longer going to have endless claims that we can make everything completely legal, so long as we pray to the god of providing "treatment" (without any serious consideration of how this is going to happen or whether it will actually do anything)? I can hardly believe it.
As amazing as this concession to Justice Jackson was, Alito somehow at least comes close:
JUSTICE ALITO: Well, see, the problem is that once you move away from the definition that makes the inquiry basically tautological, then you get into the question of assessing the closeness of the connection between the status and the conduct. And you do run into problems with the person who's a kleptomania -- a kleptomaniac or a person who suffers from pedophilia. So how do you distinguish that? How does the Court assess how close the connection has to be?
MS. CORKRAN: So -- so, for both of those categories, the -- the -- the status is defined -- I don't know if status is the right word there -- being a pedophilia or having pedophilia is defined by the urge that you have, not by your conduct, and acting on that urge. So, if someone were to act on that urge, that tight causal nexus on why they didn't have access to shelter, then they would be outside of our claim.
What's this?!?! A distinction between "having an urge" and conduct?!? In the realm of sexuality? Say it isn't so! How many times can The Lefties That Be just boldly admit that the entire slew of homosexual behavior to gay marriage cases were based on a fundamental lie?!
The more cynical among us might observe that status/conduct games seem to be yet another way that folks run away from agency, shielding anything that they like in terms of it "being who you are" or things that just "happen to you". There is no real theory here, and most attempts to justify it are pretty philosophically incoherent. It doesn't seem like the Court is going to buy this particular extension of The Game, but why wouldn't they try? They've had all these other victories, including effectively banning Christian groups from campuses, by substituting "status" in for "conduct/belief". Why are the Status Games so powerful?
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
That is a gross mischaracterization of what I said. I didn't claim that it exists. I said that I wasn't going to look, which implies that I don't actually know whether it exists. Then, I gave reasons why I wasn't going to look for your specific demand, one that involves an academic breaking the law, for two reasons. 1) I've 100% seen economic analysis done on other illegal products without breaking the law (which should be sufficient, but doesn't meet your stupid criteria), and 2) Your stupid criteria is stupid, because in principle, there is no reason why such work could be done without breaking the law. But you have this stupid criteria that they must break the law, so there would be no point in me wasting time finding something, anyway (because you would reject it, since they didn't break the law).
Feel free to come back in the future anytime you want to have non-stupid criteria and actually discuss economics of child porn rather than just baldly asserting that economics magically doesn't apply unless an academic broke the law.
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
You might have missed the line about mistaking methodological constraints for a metaphysical theory. That's pretty darn close to the central claim of most atheists, especially the ones 'round the internets who would be most apt for not-kid-gloves treatment.
a lot of old-school atheists got really uncomfortable about "atheism+" or "New Atheism", and those are the steps that really defined the transition. I could also argue that this confuses correlation and causation if 2010s atheism was really just a corpse piloted by SJWs.
But that's kind of the whole point. They created the corpse! They knew what they were doing when they killed it. But like any social fad, they shrugged it off, thinking that nothing could possibly go wrong. Only after they saw the fruits of their labor did they start feeling uncomfortable about the whole thing. Let's put it this way, I've seen arguments that Christianity is to blame for wokeness, and some of those arguments are actually not all that bad. But if you look at, like, a random Protestant 'barely believer' church that is now headed toward wokeness, you probably wouldn't say that they caused the rise of wokeness. You certainly wouldn't use that in particular to claim that Christianity in general caused the rise of wokeness. But you might say something like, "Look at these churches who have basically abandoned any real faith, are honestly basically agnostic already, don't even really believe in any sort of real morality. Those choices have left a corpse of a church which was just too vulnerable to 'woke mind virus'." In a sense, those choices caused wokeness to rise up in those churches rather than in others. In the same sense, that's what a lot of the 2010s atheism did to large portions of the masses.
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
Your suggestion to just get information from the NCMEC is hopelessly naive too. Are you going to ask the National Center Against the Exploitation of Illegal and Harmful Drugs for objective data to analyze that market next too?
The only two options are, "Believe everything said by one of the organizations," or, "Don't even bother trying." Brilliant. If only we had the ability to work to acquire a source of data and then not be stupid about how we analyze it...
If I'm an economist and tell people I'm researching the economics of heroin or something the response will probably be something like "Heh, cool. Drugs are fun." If I tell them I'm researching child pornography, that immediately shifts the whole mood in the room.
Sure, this would be relevant for whether someone actually has done econometrics. Not at all relevant for whether basic economic reasoning is applicable to the product. You had started off trying to apply basic economic reasoning to the product, before changing course and deciding that all economic reasoning is inapplicable (except the one you did).
That you refuse to acknowledge it at all
Try again, maybe? I mean, I've ignored a lot of the total garbage you've been spewing; maybe I missed a nice, defensible motte in your comments.
I accept your admitted inability to refute my central point
You're funny. Please, try to state your central point. It would be nice if your central point didn't include, "...and therefore, child porn is immune to economics."
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
Ah yes, a parenthetical in the middle of a paragraph that is mostly parentheticals (some nested!) is your central point. Right then.
Let me see if I can summarize your four paragraph 'basic logic'.
-
Child porn is illegal. Fake child porn isn't.
-
Economic reasoning can be applied to child porn and fake child porn. They are both goods and are to some degree considered substitutes, so the economic reasoning of substitute goods applies.
-
Restating that the economic reasoning of substitute goods applies.
-
Suddenly, economic reasoning of substitute goods doesn't apply, because... parentheticals. Um, I guess economic reasoning of substitute goods doesn't apply, because there is a public policy regarding these goods?
Is that about right?
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
Ok, so all of the academic economics work I've seen on other goods that have government policies which distort natural incentives... is wrong?
Just yesterday, I mentioned that a variety of more rural Canadians that I met on my last visit to the area all expressed some form of concern about their "culture changing" with respect to significant immigration. I didn't have great examples, because I'm still mostly an outsider to them.
This morning, my wife shared this with me. The Moncton city hall has, for the last twenty years, displayed a large menorah around Hanukkah. That tradition ends this year. The city cited "separation of church and state" as the driver of their change of course, as if something in the legal landscape has changed in the last twenty years concerning public displays of religious symbols. Spoiler: nothing in the legal landscape concerning separation of church and state has changed in Canada in the last twenty years concerning public displays of religious symbols. The city is getting mostly derided in social media, and a common talking point is that they're putting out this claim while, at the very same moment, prominently displaying all sorts of Christmas decorations.
So what has changed? Here is where I have a little bit of insider exposure. I don't have public sources for this, and so I'm not actually even sure of how accurate it is, but it's the story "on the street". Basically, there's not that many Jews in the area, anyway, maybe a couple few hundred, but they've been there for a long time. Part of the community. Part of the culture. On the other hand, the sense was that circa ten years ago, there was almost no Muslim presence whatsoever. I was told that ten years ago, the only mosque in the area was really just a small house that had been repurposed. Since then, massive amounts of immigration from Francophone North Africa. They've come with a predominant religion and, well, different cultural understandings. This is what seems to have changed.
Obviously, the cherry on top of what's changed is October 7. It's tempting to think that that is the only thing that's changed, and even if they didn't have all the immigration in the past several years, the city of Moncton would have made the same choice. However, I can't help but be reminded of the old quote about how you go broke two ways: first, slowly, then second, all at once. It's hard to detangle the two.
EDIT: I realized after posting that I wanted to mention something else that was in my mind, but never figured out how to include it. It's that, culturally, they're bloody Canadians! Their culture is obscenely polite and accepting of others, other cultures, and multiculturalism generally. They're more than happy to let people do all sorts of their own cultural things, and general tolerance skews quite high. They're really of the "we can all get along" mindset. This is one of those things that seems to be cracking as they struggle with new situations that they find themselves in, and seems to me to be one of the reasons why they're so confused about these changes occurring in their own midst.
ControlsFreak
9mo ago
If I think that the Nazis are bad, which of course I do, I can fight them. Recognizing that my morals are not materially more true than their's doesn't stop me.
What, then, do you mean by "bad"? Like, if you were to say to another human, let's call her Alice, that you thought the Nazis are bad, what does that entail? Does it mean that you have a reason, which you think should be convincing to Alice, to believe that... oh, I don't know, that their morals are materially less true than yours? Are you just merely expressing some feature of your personal morals, completely isolated from anything else in the universe? Like, what's going on here?
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
Only courts, not prosecutors, can definitively say whether something constitutes a crime. It is a separation of powers issue.
Citizens United was pretty clear that the purpose of contribution limits is to prevent quid pro quo. Does that count as a court saying something meaningful about what constitutes a crime here?
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
Let's imagine thus that we're now in a classic substitute goods situation and CP producers are in fact looking to lower "costs" (again, not monetary).
I did not make a claim/ask a question about producer costs. I asked about the price.
ControlsFreak
1mo ago
Because i do.
Are you saying this in the vibes-based sense, or is there another reason?
Major NYT opinion piece dropped this week. At the time of my clicking on it, it was under the headline "Born This Way? Born Which Way?" It is a tour de force of Current Thinking on all things sex and gender, covering trans issues as well as sexuality. Given that the title is so evocative concering the topic of my recent AAQC, I feel like I can't help but comment on the current state of affairs. Let's start with the history of thinking on sexuality, since that's the closest link.
And later:
Finally:
She words it differently, but the conclusion is basically the same as what I had said - it was
importantcritical to force people to believe in Dogmatic Position so that political victories could be won, but in the Year of Our Lord 2023, basically no one even bothers defending it anymore; they don't have to! The political victories have already been enshrined.Unfortunately, that's about all that the article really says about the "born this way" narrative and the political history around it. Fortunately, it hits on quite a few other notes that are highly related to things I've thought about and said for a while. The article opens:
And soon after hits the high note:
Man, I can't even blockquote it without thinking about how many domains this thinking touches on. I'm sure it's been remarked on here, and I feel like there was an SSC/ACT post or some other significant post here where people ruminated on life choices, regret, and the human condition of our walk through a garden of forking paths, where every choice we make closes off an infinity of alternate possible realities. Like, this is so core to the the human condition that it's hard to imagine subjects that it doesn't touch on. Nevertheless, I can't help but think about the hot button ones - abortion, consent, child sex, and economics.
Abortion
Commonly, in discussions of abortion, a divide appears concerning what sex is about, how important it is, whether it's sacred or whatever, etc. I feel like a common perspective that is expressed by pro-choice folks is that it is wayyy less important/sacred than they think their opponents think it is. This opinion piece talks of competitive swimming, but I recall people saying that sex is like a tennis game. It's just a fun recreational activity that a couple of people show up to do together; they both consent to playing tennis; they just have some amount of fun; then nothing particularly interesting happens. In the era of ubiquitous birth control, they think that sex is totally just like this.
This is used to argue that abortion should be totally fine, and the only people who disagree are some crazy folks who still think sex has some meaning or implies some responsibilities/consequences and apparently want to punish women for basically playing a game of tennis.
Consent to sexual relations
We start to see some cracks in the full-on sex-is-tennis position already when it comes to consent to sexual relations. Imagine your boss really loves tennis and decides that he wants to have some team-building out on the court. There's plenty of perceived pressure to play. Maybe you don't particularly like it, but you feel like you should just suck it up and play. It's not that bad. Maybe you could even learn to kinda like it. Besides, you likely have other parts of you job that you like even less (friggin' TPS reports are the worst). Lots of people might think this is kind of a stupid thing to be part of a job, perhaps somewhat unprofessional. Who knows? I hear that some people feel like they have to play golf to make that sale, and they don't seem to think it's terribly unprofessional.
Regardless of how annoying/stupid/unprofessional you think it is, basically no one would argue that it should be criminal. But we absolutely would if it was sex! It seems to be significantly different.
Child sex
When it comes to the question of whether children can consent to sexual relations, the dominant position is that it is just trivial that they cannot. I mean, sure, they can consent to playing tennis just fine, but sex is completely and totally different. Why? I've steeped myself in the academic philosophy literature on this topic, and while it's a thousand times better than the responses you'll get from regular Joe, it still comes in seriously lacking in my mind.
Westen doesn't take a super strong position on the topic, but likely grounds it in what he calls the 'knowledge prong' of what counts as valid consent. A person needs to have sufficient knowledge of... something... related to what sex is, what it means, what the consequences could be, the cultural context... I'm not exactly sure what. I don't think he did the best job of really digging in to details here. This is perhaps the most fruitful line of inquiry for future academic work for those who want to salvage a consent-only sexual ethic, but right now it's seriously lacking. Any work will definitely need to distinguish from tennis, because I see kids out learning tennis at our local courts somewhat regularly, and they can hardly be said to understand the risks/cultural context/etc. of tennis any more than could be said for sex.
Wertheimer, on the other hand, doesn't even attempt a theoretical explanation for why children cannot consent. Instead, he views it as simply an empirical question of whether, in a particular society, children tend to be, on net, harmed by sex. The opinion piece writes:
A disciple of Wertheimer might say that a large part of how children perceive sex, and whether they perceive it as harmful or not, may depend on the perceptions others have of it.
Of course, either of these approaches opens up all sorts of cultural engineering possibilities. If we team up the "sex is like tennis" folks with the "comprehensive sex education as early as possible" folks, it's easy to imagine how society could change to one where children learn the requisite knowledge and are not, on net, harmed by the sex that they do consent to. Some folks might cheer on this result, saying that society would be immeasurably improved to the point that it unlocks this new world of possible good things... but the "it is trivially true that children cannot possibly consent to sex" crowd would certainly disagree.
Economics
I don't have a better subtitle for this section, but my thoughts here are background shaded by the free market, Marginal Revolution style economics, which emphasizes that it's important to let people make choices, even ones that they end up deeply regretting. "Capitalism is not a profit system; it's a profit and loss system," they say. You have to let people choose to try things that may succeed and make them a boatload of money... but which may also fail and lose them a boadload of money. This is often justified by placing a possible governing agent in a position of ignorance - you just don't know ahead of time which choices are going to be spectacular failures and which are going to be spectacular successes. Pushing in an even more libertarian direction, many folks want to say that we should just let people do the most harmful of drugs, even though we can be 99.99% sure that it is destined to end in pain and hardship. The article wants to have a sense of this for individual gender choices. 'You know what? Even if they regret it, we need to let them choose, because we're in a position of ignorance.' The article begins concluding with:
Hits a bit different after a section on child sex, though.
Closing Thoughts
I don't have a nice tidy bow to put on this package. I have my personal beliefs1, but I don't have a nice clean way to just directly put together a story connecting these things in a way that will please any particular reader with their own inclinations on the various questions involved. Mostly, it just really stands out to me that lots of people have completely contradictory opinions, at their conceptual core, when we try to apply them to all of the above problem domains. I don't think it's "just the outgroup", either. I think we need careful work and reflection across problem sets to help people understand where their positions are sounding hypocritical and why there are serious, huge problems here that are fundamental to the human condition. Reductive slogans aren't going to work. "Shut up and mouth these politically-acceptable words or you're an X-ophobe," isn't going to work.
1 - If you must know, I think the transgender ideology is near incoherent philosophically and anti-science biologically; I think abortion is wrong regardless of whether sex is like tennis; I don't subscribe to a consent-only sexual ethic and therefore don't think the question is of all that much import for whether children should be able to have sex; I generally lean pro-profit-and-loss capitalism and less drugs.
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