EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
I know what you're here for. What's his bias? Politically I at least like to think of myself as a true moderate, maybe (in US context) slightly naturally right-leaning but currently politically left-leaning if I had to be more specific.
User ID: 1043
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
4d ago
Gave some examples in a short comment above/below.
It seems to me that court packing arguments (which for the record I vehemently oppose) were more a result of a sustained series of SC appointments they lost. Merrick Garland resulted in some bad blood, but then even after they simply had a mixture of bad luck and bad timing with more justices dying or retiring than is typical. Some (maybe not all but a big chunk) of this resentment comes down to bitterness. And not only on the SC (3, more than Obama’s 2, in just a 4 year term instead of 8), for example this showed that Trumps first term almost placed as many appeals court judges in 4 years as Obama in 8. And polling data indicates that views of SC partisanship (see line graph) tend to dovetail with the change in balance. I’d say that’s evidence against Dems being especially respectful of the SC, but I think that aspect of fairness and respect has always been a little overblown. For at least a century the SC has been controversial and also respect ebbs and flows, especially with major decisions, and that’s true for both parties.
In short judgeships are a separate issue that I don’t think is representative. But on that issue, yes I think both parties behave similarly.
As to forgiveness? I’ll have to think a bit. A few come to mind though. Clinton didn’t take a hard tack after his own impeachment and that helped his reputation a lot (and Gore was a whisker away from winning). Internationally our relatively forgiving response after WW2 did quite a bit to ensure the next decades would be peaceful and even gained Germany and Japan as solid allies.
Arguably the decline in political forgiveness is partly why bipartisan stuff is harder recently, but I’m not certain how much to ascribe to it.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
4d ago
Obama-Trump transition of power. Obama’s (non)response to birtherism. I actually think the first impeachment was a relatively fair process (though I wish they had waited a little longer for more testimony). On the whole Obama’s response to tea party waves, you lie, etc wasn’t too apocalyptic and he did attempt some bipartisan working during the ACA stuff (failed but he tried). I think he also was criticized by fellow Dems for not escalating debt ceiling fights too?
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
6d ago
Wow. First of all that’s mighty quick to jump to “sides”. Democrats aren’t a monolith, nor Republicans, and neither are Trumpists - not even within his own administration.
Second, I think you’re misrepresenting the game theory. It’s been a while, but I’m pretty sure that “generous tit for tat” usually wins in the situation most like US politics (you copy the last move of the other side, but occasionally show forgiveness - note that tit for tat also allows chained cooperation, so it’s not infinite revenge). Of course it’s highly dependent on the situation and population of other players, so you’re overstating your case anyways.
Third, you’re misrepresenting Democrats. “When they go low we go high” was the motto for quite a while. You can make a good case it was never this rosy but many felt that way. In that respect Newsom’s actions are a half anomaly and not universally supported to boot (though anti-gerrymandering is not a partisan issue; even my home state of Utah passed a ballot measure for independent redistricting, though the legislature has tried to nuke it).
A better model of Democrats - at least as far as you can consider them united, as disclaimed - is that they are pro-rule of law or “norms”, but frequently break those norms just a little bit (eg federal judges without 60) and then go all surprised face when Republicans decide it’s open season and blow by whatever excuse/reasoning they gave (eg SC without 60). That is, Democrats are broadly reasonable but also guilty of first small steps, but Republicans are guilty of escalation. Which is worse? Eh. Depends on what you view as the normal population of game theory players! Which is debatable, not fact. Though I’d be interested to hear you actually put some reasoning to your claim.
We do have some polling data that might be helpful. Source. When Democratic voters were asked about how acceptable gerrymandering is, 70% say never (9% in retaliation only, 7% it’s normal, 14% not sure). When asked if they would gerrymander California in response to Texas, 63% say yes (18% no, 14% not sure). With some reasonable assumptions that implies about half of the Democratic electorate are hypocrites.
That’s a little depressing until you recall that this isn’t too uncommon when an abstract principle collides with a concrete example. Affordable housing advocates often turning into NIMBYs, deficit hawks suddenly balking at actual cuts, or Trump supporters who claim to value personal character, the list goes on. Ideally those of us here aren’t actually playing these games and say what we mean while thinking about the implications before blanket claims, but people are people and confirmation bias/selective attention are potent sociopolitical drugs.
The final issue that I think is a latent one lurking behind this disagreement is this: how many politicians genuinely believe what they preach, vs how many are simply milking a character or playing chameleon just to get reelected (or self-enrich)?
I find the answer to that latter question has a very broad spread, and if two people don’t agree on a common answer you get accusations of bad faith or poor reasoning because of the implications of your answer on the political process.
I kind of feel that there’s a recent crop of writers who actually suffer the opposite problem: no romance at all, ever. Which feels very… inhuman? The human experience is such that at least some kind of attraction is bound to come up in any developed world covering any significant stretch of time. Even more so for teen protagonists, but hardly exclusively. So it feels weird when these stories don’t bother, either, possibly because writing good romance is admittedly at least a little difficult.
As an example there’s a very noticeable divide in the manga/manhua world between boy audience and girl audience fictions. It’s increasingly common that the guy oriented ones either play the typical harem-flirty route, where everyone is interested but the main character never commits, or increasingly never being it up at all, focusing on other power fantasy aspects or simply going all in on visuals and violence. Depressing, really, that commitment is so rare, and that many relationships (even friendships) are either one-way, or trivialized with no real conflict.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
12d ago
It only takes about 5 bucks and a few minutes to use the API with a bring-your-own-key chat interface to pay as you go for Sonnet 4.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
12d ago
The write up is almost completely dishonest in its spin. Here is a copy of the report itself. Don’t consider this any kind of actual statistic, even the authors hide behind “directionally accurate” and contradict themselves within a single paragraph.
“Only 5% of custom enterprise AI tools reach production” becomes a “95% failure rate for enterprise AI systems” a paragraph later and then there’s the so-called “research note” that says “We define successfully implemented for task-specific GenAl tools as ones users or executives have remarked as causing a marked and sustained productivity and/or P&L impact”.
These three statements are not the same and occur within three successive paragraphs. I think if you read the report there are some useful broad strokes stuff but any specific claim is methodological trash.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
12d ago
The headline is almost objectively a lie. It’s completely incompatible with the stat you quoted and so I suspect they are gaming the word “failure” to mean something most people don’t consider it to mean.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
21d ago
There's a major confounder here that prevents a straightforward liberal vs conservative spin on things: "Science of Reading". As the now-famous (in education circles) Sold a Story podcast helped reveal, a lot of American teachers got suckered into a new teaching methodology for reading that just doesn't work as well (oversimplified: a de-emphasis on phonics). This spread in liberal circles partly through network effects (e.g. the Columbia Teacher's College was a major promoter). It just so happens that Mississippi as part of their reforms made sure to emphasize better practices and follow the neuroscience and good quality research.
Contextually, though I could elaborate, one of the most prominent examples of the trendy but poorly-backed programs was originally focused on reading interventions. However, these interventions sometimes did more harm than good. Infamously you'd get some teachers actively encouraging students to guess an unknown difficult word based purely on context clues and pictures. While that's a good strategy for, say, a high school student encountering a genuinely rare or unknown word, it's a terrible strategy for kids first learning how to read encountering a word that they eventually will need to know. Furthermore, one of those intervention programs had a classifier that was objectively broken. They did a study and found that their assessment of whether a student was actually one who needed help (behind level) or not performed little better than a coin flip compared to more established methods... but kept using it! Ironically, this low-effectiveness intervention program was usually the one well-meaning reading advocates at the time would adopt (or even adapt for general learners, similarly unhelpful there). Notably, Mississippi not only required individualized help for students behind but also required that help follow better, more scientifically validated methods, and so very specifically dodged this issue that plagued the rest of the country.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
23d ago
Definitely worth a larger discussion! Good post.
First I think it might be helpful to quote my full original comment:
In principle I think I agree with assisted suicide and adjacent arguments like you propose. However, in practice I think suicide legalization in almost any form is super vulnerable to misaligned incentives all over the place, and could become a legitimate slippery slope with ever more lenient standards and criteria. Mostly I don't want to live in a society where e.g. old people are pressured by the government, their loved ones, or doctors to commit suicide for partially selfish reasons at vulnerable times, which seems like a recipe for societal decay that I'm not confident we could avoid becoming should we crack open the door too far. Those kinds of subtle and not-so-subtle pressures can be pretty strong. Depressed people, old people, and sick people already have a hard enough time without people suggesting that maybe everyone would be better off without them. In that light, the US laws that focus almost exclusively on imminent or near-certain death type cases seem like as far as is prudent to go because it doesn't tempt us down that road.
I advocate for staying within a framework where we draw the line at imminent or near-certain death cases. I'm fine with assisted suicide there. I'm not fine with anything more flexible than that, and the direction I believe most societies that relax suicide legalization will end up going is a bad one. There are essentially two competing rationales here. If you draw your justification from the idea that "adult decision-making fundamentally should include suicide" that's one idea, but the one I like better is "if someone's going to die, you might as well grant them control over the method". Those are not interchangeable, and should not be conflated. Let's call the first a suicide right and the second a terminal death right for clarity.
My argument, to be clear, is that as a practical matter whatever the philosophical truth of the suicide right, not only is it controversial, implementing it is very vulnerable to abuse, to a degree that the terminal death right is not; therefore, we should not implement anything beyond a terminal death right. Some people still disagree with a terminal death right, but the scope of abuse is inherently limited. The major concern is that the diagnosis is wrong. If the suicide is done too early, frankly they were going to die anyways, so while there might still be harm to the family or others, they were going to have to cope with it at some point (and as we all know, the normal method of death is often worse for them). I think the evidence is clear enough on that point we can just all agree. So we're just left with the concern about misdiagnosis, and we can discuss that if someone objects, but structurally the incentives mostly run the other way: people don't like to be told their death is certain, the medical system both doctor and insurer prefers to keep them alive (and paying bills), etc. Of course, the government does not, they'd rather do whatever is least costly overall, and the individual doesn't have enough say on policy to matter, even if theoretically affected by the premium increase. Ironically despite 2010 opposition to an ACA addition for Medicare coverage of voluntary end-of-life consultations and decision-making (so-called "death panels"), we ended up with something slightly worse, where we ended up with coverage but the decisions are usually made ad-hoc, last minute, and influenced by hidden coverage decisions by bureaucratic panels. Still, despite the imperfection, I don't think people who could have lived longer but were misdiagnosed is a large group, and I am not worried about that group growing too big over time.
By contrast, a suicide right has a much larger scope of potential harm. The most notable one being that you might getter 'better' in some way. So a death cuts off that entire potential. After all, that's one of the main and more general moral objections to death, is that is robs an individual of potential. Because of this scope enlargement, some issues that were previously irrelevant suddenly become very relevant. Because of this scope enlargement, the potential pool of people expands by an order of magnitude at least. Some examples include the mentally ill, those in chronic pain, those with "bad quality of life", and also the elderly themselves as a whole category. Even, potentially, people who aren't mentally ill in a traditional sense but find low overall "meaning" in life. In addition to the possibility that you might exit one of these groups (get 'better' in the relevant way), there's also the possibility that one or more of these groups shouldn't philosophically deserve a death right at all. We might call that last opinion, where you like some but not all of those groups, a limited suicide right for clarity of language.
Now again I want to say that I'm agnostic or even slightly in favor of a broad suicide right (for example on the autonomy grounds you mentioned). I simply don't trust the incentives to align in a way where that right, insofar as it exists, is meaningfully and rigorously defined and enforced. In other words, I don't want to give it the full legal status as a "right" because of side effects. Does that mean I don't actually believe in a suicide right as an traditional right? I leave that to the philosophers, but I feel similarly about the death penalty, if it's relevant. I think a death penalty is highly natural, even desirable, but practically the legal fight and bills and guilt certainty and political controversy and all that isn't worth bothering over, so if the "right" goes unimplemented, I'm not too bothered.
So let's talk evidence. As you say, my argument can be disproved or disputed seemingly simply based on the evidence (is abuse so common as to become inevitable). I agree that it is sensible to do so, and hopefully we have enough data. However, I think it's telling that despite agreeing here you then spend most of your post in speculation mode despite the stated intention to spend it in evidentiary mode. I don't mean that as any kind of attack and enjoyed your post quite a bit as a thought experiment, but think you settled the evidence too quickly and glossed over the details of the system as it currently works abroad. Yes, that does mean we get plenty of good elucidation of your ideas on the subject more broadly, which is neat, but I don't find it a satisfying response to my actual original claim, and that's what I'm going to focus on in my response here. With that said, it's possible I'm wrong about this and you are admittedly in a slightly better spot to asses it (?) than I am. I also want to caveat this with the point where I notice that all the examples are by definition foreign examples. America has a unique health care system, very infamously set up differently than how almost everyone does it, and so it's probably true that the American risks take on a slightly different form than those abroad! I'm American and admittedly American-centric in most of my comments here (sorry).
You basically present the following pieces of evidence:
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"The countries that have legalized assisted dying are not, generally speaking, ruthless capitalist hellscapes where human life is valued purely in economic terms"
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Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, and Canada have all had assisted dying for 1-2 decades and do not "pressure vulnerable populations into premature death" and serve as good evidence.
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There are rigorous oversight systems and multiple safeguards, and furthermore these have neither decayed/weakened nor been peeled back in scope or rigor
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The absolute numbers remain "low"
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The families of those killed have "better outcomes"
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There is "no significant evidence of systemic coercion"
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People like the policy overall
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(I find the last point irrelevant. Sometimes people like bad policies. That doesn't make them good policies, and doesn't make them good for society either. This is a common fallacy and I don't think it merits inclusion, my belief in the wisdom of the masses notwithstanding.)
Before I go further, let me clarify a few things. A suicide right, remember, can be applied to the mentally ill, those in chronic pain, those with "bad quality of life", and also the elderly, not just terminally ill people. Some of the common failure modes to a suicide right that I had in mind:
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Government pressure to kill yourself early/without sufficient cause, saving money
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Misdiagnosis risks for non-terminal categories
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Family pressure to kill yourself early/without sufficient cause, saving them trouble or money
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Self-pressure to kill yourself early/without sufficient cause. The reasons are myriad but might prominently include three: fearing being a burden, making a poorly reasoned/rushed decision, or finally a subjective claim that your life lacks sufficient function and/or meaning [implied: which might be inaccurate or morally objectionable].
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Well meaning doctors pressure you to kill yourself early/without sufficient cause, but use poor judgement in doing so
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Insurers pressure you indirectly to kill yourself early/without sufficient cause to save money
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"Society" provides a background pressure to kill yourself early/without sufficient cause, and this distorts all of the above in more subtle ways
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Safeguards become lax, toothless, ineffective, confusing, or counterproductive
To be clear, I will acknowledge as true that safeguards, waiting periods, and smart policy might potentially mitigate many of these worries simultaneously without needing to address root causes, and that might be fine. This admittedly makes evidentiary examination a little tricky to tease out, but also potentially easier, as in theory we can simply examine end-states instead of going point by point. However, examining end states is not an exhaustive reply to all of my concerns.
I have a few doubts about your evidentiary claims here more specifically.
A lot of the studies you cite (and performed) are about terminally ill patients. This completely misunderstands my original point, as I hope is clear above. Terminally ill patients don't give us near the same information about the slippery slope that I worry about, they aren't the problem. You cite a study about cancer patients who were terminally ill. Then you cite a study about Canada's first two years of MAID, which is a mixed-methods examination of medical end providers and families but seems to my eyes to be more an examination of how the implementation was rather than an examination of the process itself (e.g. the survey questions and methods all baked in an assumption of patient autonomy, i.e. a suicide right, as a good thing, and some moral objections as a bad thing, things like that). Furthermore, as I'll detail, the Canadian process in the first two years is much different than it is today.
You bring up the Dutch report, and I'd say on the whole the Netherlands offers moderate evidence against a slippery slope. This study summation from 2009, though dated, states there is no slippery slope almost word for word, though in the decade and a half since rates have doubled again (the trend overall is definitely not exponential and has reversed itself at times). A few more words about the Netherlands: The Dutch report refutes point 7, yes, finding that notable instances of protocol noncompliance are rare. In a sense, point 7 and point 2 are pretty similar, and maybe not justified. Maybe it bears on points 1, 5, 6, or 7, but what about the others? Anyways, it appears the Dutch protocol is designed to confirm that the to be due care, a request was "voluntary and well considered", suffering was "unbearable with no prospect of improvement", well-informed, with "no reasonable alternative", an independent physician's confirmatory opinion (including psychiatric expertise if relevant), and a well-executed death. It does seem like a legitimate system overall, with reasonable stability, and no significant evidence against, although I'm interested in what the next 10 years will have in store.
Note those requirements. While technically more expansive than strictly terminal cases, in practice it seems pretty similar. Physicians are instructed not to encourage it, only to permit it, trust is high, and the requirement that it is "unbearable with no prospect of improvement" and "no reasonable alternative" is pretty strong. No prospect of improvement and unbearable! This is not the language of an elective suicide right. Also, "the general structure of the Dutch health care system is unique. The Dutch general practitioner is the pivot of primary care in the Netherlands", so we have the generalizability issue, and I'd furthermore call out of some language from the foreword: "As in previous years, 2024 saw a significant rise in the number of euthanasia cases" and "I am therefore pleased to see the public debate on euthanasia for young people with a psychiatric disorder... debate leads to reaffirmation or adaptation of social norms... [it] helps prevent euthanasia for being taken for granted". Now, the report conflates assisted dying with terminal death care, but there is some cause of worry: institutions declaring it a right without distinction, that anyone disagreeing is against that right rather than a reasonable moral viewpoint, and explicitly stating that social change is happening. It's moral regulatory capture of a sort? Though yes, absolute numbers are in a certain sense downstream from the pressures, so if we aren't seeing supermassive increases maybe it's decent evidence against. That's however the extent of your evidence as presented.
Implied to be similar are the cases of Belgium and Switzerland. This basically also agrees against slippery slopes in Belgium despite modest increases year on year. However we should also note increasing references to a suicidal right in legislation proposed, which was on initial adoption (via decriminalization without mandatory reporting, notably, so there's reason to distrust their official numbers) explicitly said not to be a right at all. Belgium also expanded the law to cover minors, though I don't think this is a big deal by itself. Belgium also displays something interesting: an increasingly large group with a "polypathology" justification: a combinations of conditions that are not sufficient on their own but combined are bad enough to qualify. That's something to keep an eye on. And yes, the numbers we have also continue to rise, albeit slowly, and in part due to demographic changes, and mostly as that link says due to more "complex" health conditions, not psychiatric stuff, and remains mostly terminal case stuff. Overall I'd consider Belgium moderate evidence in your favor.
Switzerland is weird. It's basically self-administration only, legally unbanned with the only requirement being that it's "nonselfish"... but in practice it's administered by nonprofits or by doctor discretion which do their own gatekeeping and there's a parallel medical system that takes care of it. Frankly I think this is fertile ground for investigation, especially socially, but my post is feeling too long so I'm going to ignore it for now because those effects seem pretty unique and difficult to tease apart to my satisfaction.
Finally, but more relevantly, the Canadian example could hardly be more different than the Netherlands. Notably the best comparison for the US in particular, we see a dramatic expansion of terminal suicide rights to outright suicide rights, in all sorts of areas which trigger nearly every one of my concerns. Initially the issue is forced due to a court case that I'm not qualified to explain. It's framed in 2016 as terminal care: adults, consent-capable, "end of life", "serious and incurable illness" (in legislation softened to add "or disability"), "advanced state of irreversible decline", and "constant or unbearable physical or psychological suffering with cannot be relieved in a manner the patient deems tolerable" (in legislation softened from tolerable to "acceptable"). Seems mostly in line already, but see some cracks? The patient deems what is a tolerable remedy, and the end of life assessment is if it's "reasonably foreseeable". It's implemented, but the next development is a 2019 court case strikes the end of life bit, though, citing the Canadian modern bill of rights equivalent (!) and requests some vague changes.
The new ensuing legislative response (after some delay, in 2021) is startling. We get almost a wholesale shift from terminal-right adjacent claims to suicide-right language. More specifically, there's an expansion from terminal to "grievous and irremediable" only (though non-terminal get their own set of different requirements), the patient's own judgement remains enshrined, they expand to "mature minors", they allow limited "advance" consent, they even allow an eventual automatic time-gated clause to expand to purely mental conditions (currently on pause, it was extended). Terminal patients are given their own track, but even the existing safeguards are notably weakened, with fewer witnesses required, a removal of the waiting period, etc. The non-terminal patients admittedly get a nominally more strict set of requirements, like a 90-day reflection period. But critically, the patient must be informed about other options, but is not even required to attempt such! The witnesses need only agree that the person "given serious consideration" to the alternatives presented.
It's my understanding that this was partly based on an assertion stemming from the court cases in the early 2010s outside Quebec that suicide is in many cases itself ethically valid, and thus the physician might as well participate. I will say overall "bioethicists" come off quite poorly: see for example this impassioned and personalized narrative of the situation dressed up as a formal paper, and with a clear and controversial agenda accompanied by a disdain for any who disagree (outright abuse of credentialism, false consensus, and laundering of opinions as fact, normally things I am skeptical of when accusations are made, are pretty notable and pervasive here).
Some reporting on this issue may lead to you think that Canada, even once it allows purely mental health cases, will only be up to par with the Netherland model. I can't emphasize enough how this seems not at all to be the case. The latter model basically requires all avenues to be exhausted or likely not to work; the former only makes vague gestures at such, and although to some extent all judgements about assisted suicide have an element of subjectivity to them, Canada's model takes this way too far and almost leapfrogs terminal death rights to arrive at something pretty close to full suicide rights almost cold turkey. The narrative and impetus is driven by court cases rather than a normal bottom-up democratic process.
Data is a little sparse especially for the newer non-terminal track patients, but the numbers are much more potentially exponential looking overall than we saw in either European nation we looked at, see here for an example. Although in those cases we saw increases in the earlier years of the program, Canada has seen continual tweaking and also what appears to me to be steeper increases. We've also started to see some abuse. Non-compliance is plainly very rarely reported, see here for an example, allegedly up to a quarter of all total MAID cases, and requiring legwork the government did not even attempt to do. This examination flatly concludes that "The Canadian MAiD regime is lacking the safeguards, data collection, and oversight necessary to protect Canadians against premature death." A Wikipedia page relates several examples of exactly the kinds of pressures I worried about: doctors telling patients not applying for MAID is selfish, considering homelessness an inherently valid reason for suicide, offering MAID as a suicide intake risk assessment tool, offering MAID as an alternative to installing a wheelchair ramp, etc. to name a few. There are MAID teams at pretty much every major hospital in Canada, and my understanding is that they sometimes advocate their services under the guise of awareness, rather than keep shop open for last-resort style care.
I speculate that the Canadian method of implementation makes it uniquely vulnerable to these pressures, and I further speculate that if implemented in the United States, it would be a disaster. Maybe there's a cultural element to it as well. And before you say it, Oregon and similar states are also terminal illness only models. The US system especially has already quite a problem and unique situation with insurers and other layers in the medical system that make the incentive structure go crazy.
So hopefully you see my point. Terminal suicide rights are fine. An independent individualized suicide right based purely on conceptions of autonomy is a different ball game. I furthermore think that when considering suicide rights as such, the European examples aren't actually of nearly the same utility as they first present themselves to be (they are mostly presented in the language of terminal rights despite technically being more broad). And yes, wording and systems matter. I ran out of steam here so apologies if this didn't fully address the points that you made, but as I see it the actual evidence that I see is pretty weak for a right to suicide rooted purely in principles of autonomy. The only nation to most closely attempt such has shown very worrying signs that should be red lights for all advocates, and I predict these issues will only worsen. It's quite possible that better-designed legislation can prevent or mitigate these issues sufficiently, but that's mostly untested.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
23d ago
I joke with love <3
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
23d ago
I'm going to need a citation there. I've also seen that claim but I believe that to be a modern projection/cope rather than an actual scholarly argument. 1785 dictionary says:
To RE'GULATE. v.a. [regula, Lat.]
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To adjust by rule or method. Nature, in the production of things, always designs them to partake of certain, regulated, established essences, which are to be the models of all things to be produced: this, in that crude sense, would need some better explication. Locke.
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To direct. Regulate the patient in his manner of living. Wiseman. Ev’n goddesses are women; and no wife Has pow’r to regulate her husband’s life. Dryden.
I agree to an extent: part of the concern with the Articles of Confederation was that they had discovered early flaws with the national army (originally it was a pure volunteer state by state basis kind of thing IIRC), and so wanted it to be stronger but not so strong that it could crush legitimate internal dissent. It's also true that at least a good chunk of the arms were assumed to be (or even encouraged to be as some states even incentivized such) produced on an individual basis. It's also true that there was often a distinction made between an organized militia that was directed, drilled, and with some kind of chain of command and unorganized militias that were more like mobs, so it's not as if the concept is all wrong.
Despite all of that being true, I want to emphasize that last bit there. The intention was never that random groups should spontaneously rise up formed from ad-hoc combinations of gun-toting individuals! The intention was that localized governance was sufficiently democratic that they could decide to take collective action and associate with ad-hoc combinations of other cities and states to overthrow an overbearing national (or international) government. The distinction is quite crucial there! While I allow some nuance as to how states decide to implement this, the state was in charge at the end of the day of regulating its militias. Drilling and organizing and making them effective yes, but also deciding the proper shape, leadership, and call to action! While an individual owning firearms is useful it's still a bit incidental, because the goal the 2nd Amendment clearly states is merely that militias are capable of protecting liberty from tyranny.
In that context, a state can be somewhat strict in its regulation if the core purpose is accomplished. The test is all about core purpose, but some people have substituted an individual right-test in its place. This is subtly wrong. A state could probably choose to implement its core militia duty via individual gun-rights, but is not compelled to do so. A more modern-left state may well decide to be more discerning provided they meet the end goal. In practice, these might end up appearing similar, but they don't have to be!
Shay's Rebellion actually illustrates this, taking place in the Confederation period. Informal and ad-hoc groups of farmers and former soldiers banded together to revolt. They were not official local militias! In fact they raised themselves up in parallel to actual state legal authority, in defiance of such. Remember that that is where a lot of the power lay - the revolutionary Congress was formed from state delegations, in almost all cases with official representation!! That's where their legitimacy came from! Many people today fail to notice that, it wasn't an "extra-legal" effort, the original Revolution proceeded directly from local democracy. This was very front of mind for Constitutional drafting and party of why Washington himself and many others opposed Shay's rebellion (to be fair Jefferson was more sympathetic but he was always a little more radical in his ideas on the topic). They were an individualized mob, not a democratic effort against tyranny. The amendment was crafted in part this way to distinguish that stuff like Shay's rebellion was not the proper method of resistance (and also because at the end of the day the issue was about the policies of debt structure, not a core liberty, which farmers had failed to get implemented by official legitimate democratic means).
So the history of the matter rejects the modern framing by gun-rights advocates that it's a purely individual right. The history suggests that local democracy is important, that local democracy should be empowered, and that gun ownership is helpful to those aims. It's not saying that individualized gun ownership is a cornerstone by itself, supreme to everything else! Merely that a local repository of legitimate resistance is a duty of states to maintain.
The whole point of an index fund is that it's basically always better than guessing which companies are "solid and growing" and this advantage is only more obvious, not less, as time goes on (in part because index funds inherently re-weight on a mechanical basis as companies enter and exist whatever toplist they track, though minor differences especially within index ETFs exist in implementation). Turns out that judgement is way more subjective than often appreciated, according to the data.
There exist some speculative, theoretical reasons why index funds especially in their modern iterations might backfire in the future, but these remain wholly speculative, would mostly affect all investors roughly in aggregate together, and are not worth the time of day for most investors.
I feel like that article's example is chosen more for shock value than truth, though. Practically, they only invest a single time for almost 15 years, even though it's a big amount, does that really reflect true investor behavior (saving in the meantime)? Not only staying put for a while, but your income won't stay the same over time, so even though they inflation-adjusted the core stock market measure, it's not going to be anything remotely like "I have 40k right now or I could strategically invest it over time in equal lumps on the dips" since that 40k is already inflation-corrected, you'd never have that to start with, so to me something feels a bit wrong in the setup. At any rate most people aren't debating between saving until a major dip and investing each month. Most people are debating between investing a lump sum all at once, or doing a structured investment. That is, I have 10k in savings, do I buy now or do I split it up into some number of equal parts over days/weeks/months? Notably both this more limited entry strategy and investing your extra every month ad infinitum are both sometimes referred to as dollar cost averaging, confusingly, since they represent two quite fundamentally different use-cases and setups.
Although a similar logic applies in the structured investment case, where the lump sum technically wins out mathematically, and the longer the time horizon the more this is true (somewhat counterintuitively), it's still worth noting that a structured deposit does offer both a decrease in risk as well as some emotional benefits (provided you actually stick to the structured deposit schedule without overthinking, which is a major doubt considering they're more also probably more risk-averse and overthinking in the first place). Overall I think the math says the risk decrease is overstated, so really it just comes down to emotions. Consider the worst-case scenario and if your precise entry strategy would have made an emotional difference or not, and then consider the best-case scenario and if you'd feel substantial regret not earning more. Only the investor themselves can say, but e.g. this Vanguard paper makes the claim that assuming you don't have loss aversion (which is to some extent irrational for most investors) only "very conservative" risk tolerance people should bother to DCA and also puts some numbers to it (see page 6 for some sexy money curves).
ninja edit: fixed objection about inflation
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
24d ago
I will tell you that this is definitely true for pilots, however, in full agreement with the popular perception. Of course the barriers or demonstrably lower (spending time in hotel rooms already, far from home) on top of the similarities (long work hours, mix of boredom and stress, an abundance of young female lower-ranked coworkers).
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
24d ago
I mean, it's practical for the government to police unlawful speeches after the fact insofar as they would be justified in doing so (i.e. rarely). But you only buy a gun once, and the government needs to know you bought the gun to run the check. Are you proposing letting someone buy the gun, and then doing the check? Seems obviously flawed. I'd add that of course such a check should be done in a reasonable and timely manner, or the law is invalid/illegal/wrong/not to be enforced. For similar-ish reasons, although I view the right to protest as pretty fundamental right, it's also a realm where requiring a permit is not baseline illegal to me, or trampling on any rights. There's plenty of other stuff that, while not as hallowed as a right, are still bureaucratically necessary to approve in advance instead of retrospectively, from food handler's permits to driver's licenses to becoming a schoolteacher. I will cop to supporting short (think 1-7 days) mandatory waiting periods, but wouldn't really be too sad if they weren't a thing (and wouldn't be bothered in principle by smartly implemented mandatory waiting periods for other things, either, like major medical decisions or whatnot). All of this is in a background of not being too bothered by guns themselves floating around society like they always have, and like really quite a lot of Americans (even borderline brainwashed ones if you interrogate them closely), I'm no closet abolitionist, far from it.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
24d ago
Ah, spending your vacation in the best way!...? :)
Not an OP in this chain, but I think that's where we disagree. I'm somewhat friendly to the idea of high vs low trust societies, but I don't think that trust is inherently entropic and decaying or else we wouldn't ever have high trust to begin with. I also don't think technological or social movements from the last century or so are inherently corrosive to trust either (maaaaybe algorithmic-driven news but I am hopeful this will self-correct). I think any variation contributed by immigration is within the variation that already exists in the natural ebb and flow of trust insofar as it exists, it's not inherently directional. As an example, some immigrants might even raise institutional trust because they have a vision of America that is more rosy than Americans themselves believe. Or, of course, sometimes they bring prejudice with them, but it's not some broad brush, and it's not some inevitable march to decay. Civilization is not dying, and although history never repeats, I feel like the rhymes are there to justify humanity's continual adaptation and loose progression. As clarification, I think the 'global march of progress' narrative often parroted on the Left is super-duper wrong, but civilization itself has a stubborn tendency to stick around. Empires, of course, do not; mind you don't mistake the two!
Contra MaiqTheTrue, I think I draw the opposite conclusion from similar facts. Even though many individuals may not have full awareness or be capable of navigating balances and tradeoffs and knowing the fine details, we can still accomplish positive and clever execution because the intensities of belief act as "weights" on the system as a whole. Work tends to happen in the middle near the fulcrum, and directional pressures - even if vague by themselves! - lead to a convergence on a balance point actually quite close to the ideal in many cases. The more lower-d democratic a system is (caveat: actually a degree of representative government is also needed, policy is written by individuals after all), the better this tends to work. That is, I think wisdom of the masses theory is broadly true, and that even intelligent individuals in power often respect these counterbalances, even unconsciously, more than is often appreciated. A local administrator might tell you plenty of superficial rationales for choosing certain zoning restrictions, for example, but ultimately there is a lurking calculus of the big players in the city and what kind of things the voters like that has more often than not pre-determined the smaller range of plausible outcomes before they even start drafting them up.
Under this model of the world, even cynical, loud, and evil people who wield principles like a weapon and view politics as a blood sport often act more as weights on the scale than actual participants. Moving the Overton Window and living on the extremes provides a degree of additional leverage, this is true, but that's not a bug it's a feature! The 'intensity of belief' should affect the balance of things (and even pure cynics are downstream of this intensity, not the actual upstream source). Furthermore promoting more lower-d democratic behaviors helps quite a lot, indirectly, to expose them for what they are, and re-weight the balance over time.
the unusual thing about the US is that there isn't a set of subordinate ethnic-national identities that the civic identity is built on top of
Not really. Well, this is historically wrong... obviously in the present day this is pretty clearly correct. Besides Texas of course, and for a while Utah to some degree (and maybe also Vermont? It never joined the Articles of Confederation and took a few years to join the United States too, although a lot of this was New York's stubbornness denying them. I don't think my native Oregon Territory makes the cut though), you only have to look at the Civil War and the decisions made by many individuals there to discover that some people did in fact consider other identities as not even necessarily subordinate but even superceding that of full nationality. Robert E Lee as a classic example notably considered allegiance to Virginia as supreme to that of America. However, it's worth noting that this really only applied to the original 13 colonies and weakened substantially over time. And of course every war in particular was a major impetus towards nationalism.
Still, I get what you're saying. There was a sort of "purpose" and consciousness behind the creation of the US that many other [Western] nations lack, at least so quickly. It's nonetheless difficult to say what exactly generalizes and what does not, because historians well know that nationalization somewhat paralleled technologies that facilitated internal movement (e.g. the railroad), internal mixing (e.g. educational and literacy trends), and led to increasing national mobilization in the military realm (post-Napoleonic warfare). The US is also a bit of an aberration in the sense that it has limited history (in a Eurocentric sense, and thus fewer pre-existing loyalties) so it's not an easily extensible template.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
24d ago
At least in the case of terrorists specifically, they are demonstrably vulnerable to copycat contagions, and stabbings are the current contagion in Europe. So that particular point I would observe is a little bit faulty.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
24d ago
I mean, that's ultimately a process violation and objection though, not a fundamental one. A background check is simply a method (and the only real one?) so as to enforce an already existing, reasonable, and constitutional limit on felons or other prohibited persons owning guns.
An inability to find a pro-gun psychiatrist would of course be an objection, but one on facts and merits, not principle.
In principle I think I agree with assisted suicide and adjacent arguments like you propose. However, in practice I think suicide legalization in almost any form is super vulnerable to misaligned incentives all over the place, and could become a legitimate slippery slope with ever more lenient standards and criteria. Mostly I don't want to live in a society where e.g. old people are pressured by the government, their loved ones, or doctors to commit suicide for partially selfish reasons at vulnerable times, which seems like a recipe for societal decay that I'm not confident we could avoid becoming should we crack open the door too far. Those kinds of subtle and not-so-subtle pressures can be pretty strong. Depressed people, old people, and sick people already have a hard enough time without people suggesting that maybe everyone would be better off without them. In that light, the US laws that focus almost exclusively on imminent or near-certain death type cases seem like as far as is prudent to go because it doesn't tempt us down that road.
The sad but accurate truth is that crimes of passion are common to mankind (men especially but occasionally women too). And when talking passion and anger, it actually is quite true that even small impediments can help reduce rates. I think when talking about society-wide gun policy, it makes sense to weigh the pros and cons; the typical gun-carry argument is what, that in case a mass shooting happens you can step in? Sure, fine, but compare the number of those cases to cases where an easily accessible gun leads to a death of passion, and I think the latter case is a clear winner.
I think being around open carry guns should be in the same "nervousness" category as crossing a busy street, or driving a car through a heavy pedestrian area. So being around a carrier gives a bit of an edge of seriousness, and demands reasonable attention. Enough to be annoying and noticeable, I think, and mildly unpleasant. Chainsaw is probably a bit too far a comparison in my view because of the intentionality, but lethality is far different for guns than basically any other mundane item (pens? please. except maybe knives but in the US that's not super common knowledge) so it's not an irredeemable one.
Mind you I personally have two main opinions on guns: one, that if we want to significantly change gun laws, we probably need an actual constitutional amendment, and two that insofar as the constitution allows* getting a gun should be a medium annoyance, no more no less. Requirements that are de facto bans are stupid or illegal. I like well-written red flag laws. I'd love for there to be a minimum licensure, think learner's driving permit. An interesting idea would be to also ask for a character reference or two, essentially someone vouching for the gun owner? That could create some desirable social externalities. I love being careful about buying and selling laws, though don't think an actual permanent registry or record is needed.
* (edit) I'm not totally convinced by the argument that any gun control is proscribed Constitutionally. To me the regulated-militia bit implies a strong skepticism of loose cannons and even an outright endorsement of some loose degree of government (perhaps suitably local) control. The text more or less says because of this reason, then there is a right to bear arms, and so I think it logically follows that if the reason is not satisfied, then there is no such right. A more extreme version of this argument I haven't seen much suggests that a properly accountable municipal police force is essentially filling the militia role, thus there's not even an individual right provided the rationale holds. I don't think I quite endorse that, but on factual grounds (i.e. police don't fill the role) not rhetorical ones. Practically speaking for the idea of a militia to work, you probably need an individual right, but I think states have some decent leeway there as to how they get that done, so I wouldn't call it a requirement. Which is also worth mentioning as national gun laws should never be the primary focus. Again, if you don't like it (either because you want more or less than that)? Yep, constitutional amendment, only way. Sucks but them's the breaks.
In other words, Heller is wrong (well, right on the conclusion but partially wrong on the reasoning). Or that it's correct but the phrase in 1(b) "so that the ideal of a citizens’ militia would be preserved" holds more weight than the SC gave it credit for, i.e. states as holders of responsibility for militia regulation can do any law that doesn't result in a de facto infringement on the idea of a citizen militia, and the DC handgun ban clearly was an infringement.
I would say the advantage of ChatGPT over a traditional translator is that you can interrogate it. For example, say you get an email from your boss you do not understand. You can ask it not only for a translation but also about subtext or tone, even to rephrase the translation in a way that preserves meaning. It seems to me that if you take advantage of this even 20% of the time, you come out ahead, because despite obvious model weaknesses and potential errors, direct translation has its own misunderstandings too (which seem worse).
Ditto for the composition side of things. You can do stuff like compose a foreign language email and then have it back-translate it to you as a way of double checking you said what you intended to say. Sure, AI might worsen the writing,
Alas, most humans lack this kind of imagination, but optimistically we can teach people how to get more out of their LLM usage.
All that said the original post as I understood it was more about using LLMs as a language learning tool, and I think there, they have a potential point. The biggest counterpoint also comes from interactivity: ever tried using the advanced voice mode? It's pretty neat, and allows verbal practice in a safe, no-judgement, infinite-time environment, which is quite literally the biggest obstacle to language learning 95% of people face! So if the AI sometimes misleads in correcting a passage, I think it's a worthwhile tradeoff for the extra practice time, considering how frequently language learners basically stop learning, or give up learning, at a certain point.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
26d ago
Just as a linguistic aside, "bold-faced" lie is not incorrect according to some dictionaries but is probably the wrong word; the original is "bald-faced" (or the less common "barefaced") and meaning unconcealed, as opposed to "bold-faced" which meant impudent. It's been mutually confused for long enough that most won't call it wrong, but IMO it properly still is.
It’s actually pretty fascinating how few things there are that offer real, tangible, and difficult to oppose feedback.
In gaming for example, despite claimed common frustration with trash teammates, team games are quite common. Because you can blame them, in part! StarCraft for example is the complete opposite. It’s a 1v1 format, and you can play “ladder” which ranks you and gives you a matched skill opponent. The fact is that the game is pretty well balanced. If you lost there was almost certainly a reason, that was your fault. You didn’t scout well enough, or missed a build timing, or didn’t adapt your army composition in time, or controlled them poorly, or made a poor decision about where and when to expand to a new base. And surprise surprise, it’s not that popular, because again you can only really blame yourself. Even “cheese” strategies that leverage an unconventional and seemingly unfair method often have glaring weaknesses to accompany them.
Now to be fair, implementing advice has more drawbacks than mere effort or unbending of pride. You can get stuck in a dead end, you might have difficulty deciding when to bail, and deeply implementing a program often has switching costs if you later decide to do something else. But yes, on balance most people are better off committing to something rather than spending a lot of time waffling, at least in our modern society.
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