Felagund
2mo ago
Wait, do progressives really pull out the adoption studies? That's a risky move.
Felagund
2mo ago
I think his point is valid that it's not something to go out of your way to bring up because it looks bad to many people, but yeah, you could well end up in situations where you have to bring it up.
Felagund
3mo ago
It's not wrong to ask for reasons for loyalty. Loyalty usually has some form of reciprocation as an intended part of the relationship.
Is he wrong to say that it's counterproductive? And in what ways? That would more substantively address the assertion.
Felagund
4mo ago
I think that you're right, and that a progressive would never talk about things like this, but I do think he makes some points, and I'd really appreciate it if you could explain how you interpret them, or think that someone on the left might interpret them, instead of merely saying that if we spent five minutes it would be plain. Because, to me, it's not plain.
Here's what I see:
According to the progressive viewpoint, we're supposed to believe that the correlation between IQ scores and life outcomes is some sort of coincidence.
You're right, this is a strawman. Most people recognize that IQ tests are to some extent valid. Progressives would say something more that variation between IQ scores and life outcomes between groups are both due to the differences in how they are treated. (E.g. structural racism.)
We're supposed to believe that IQ tests are somehow biased against blacks and in favor of whites, and just sort of ignore how people from India and China score.
I'm pretty sure this is a thing that is not infrequently believed. Look at all the talk of racist tests. Do I think everyone believes this? Certainly not, Asians have a reputation for being smart in the general population, I think. But I'm pretty sure that this is true of some people, and it is not uncommon to think that there is no IQ difference between groups.
We're supposed to believe that tech companies are thick with a form of white racism that loves those Indians and Chinese but hates blacks and Hispanics.
I don't know that I've actually seen any explicit account of why Indians and Chinese do well, but it certainly does seem like if you want to stick solely to a "systemic racism" explanation (which, to be fair, it is by no means certain that a progressive will do), it would seem like you have to do something like this to explain the disparity: if disparities are always and everywhere due to racism, well, here is a disparity. In actuality, I expect most would think something like what I said before—that people think that Asians are smart, or have tiger moms driving them to success, which is, of course, far more accurate than that it's due to racism.
We're supposed to believe that the differences in development between Asia and Africa are total historical happenstance.
I don't think most progressives think about this much. I'm sure some think it's related to the extent to which they were subjugated by colonial powers and fallout from that.
We're supposed to look at the great black uplift project that has spent fifty or sixty years accomplishing practically nothing concrete, and just nod along with those progressives when they assure us that this failure has absolutely nothing to do with those pesky IQ scores.
I think that you're right that progressives would never talk like this, insofar as they would never mention that latter point, but his point stands: eliminating disparities has been a failure, and so it seems silly not to at least consider that the disparities might not be entirely environmental.
We're supposed to avoid noticing that "structural racism" only really seems to keep those low-IQ races down.
Yeah, this does seem like a mis-modeling of how the left think it happens, and you are right that this was a failure for him to model the other side. The left would see both failure and lower IQ scores as a consequence of racism, not as some great unknown.
But I think the overall picture is fairly clear. If you want to deny differences between groups, saying that they are due to racial dynamics in culture, I think something not too far from what @somedude is portraying his opponents as thinking seems like it needs to be believed. Yes, I don't think it's very plausible. But I think a lot of the reason that this sort of thing doesn't come up, but is implicitly believed, is because it's prevented from being considered, and a great many people have an aversion to addressing things like this, because they implicitly think it is a bad (as in, morally) thing to have these sorts of views.
Frankly, I long had the same impulse, and am certainly not convinced that every HBD poster here is a paragon of virtue.
But I don't actually know what you yourself think, @guesswho, and I will have a far better time understanding what your view of all these matters is if you tell me, instead of asking us all to imagine our own version of your views (or that of the typical person on the other side). I would rather learn than fight strawmen. This place is a little of an echo chamber, sadly; a breaking of the monotony would be lovely.
Felagund
4mo ago
Investments Re:Amazon
Amazon would lose some of its profit evaluation, so some of the money that Bezos expected to one day earn (via stock) goes to his employees. Does this necessarily mean that Amazon would have to “size down” or grow at a smaller rate? Not at all, (1) investors would be more than happy to buy the stock at a lower price, which spreads the eventual return to less wealthy parties; (2) Amazon could have paid employees in stock options; (3) Amazon could have taken a loan, like most businesses (this year it obtained an 8bil loan).
Okay, let's examine each of those possibilities. For (3), this can't keep happening indefinitely, without loss of growth; you're borrowing against the future. Short term? It's fine. Long term? It's harmful. For (2) and (1), this also shouldn't be things happening in perpetuity. If your way of making money is by selling future prospects, forever, you're a ponzi scheme. Further, repeatedly selling stock dilutes the value of everyone who you've sold stock to, including those you paid before. These are fine temporarily, but not as your business model.
But in any case you can see that investors make too much money
Wait, why?
that would have gone to wealthy investors and speculators.
Of course, not all the investors are wealthy; you too can buy stocks. But they majority are. Okay, why is that bad? When they first buy the stock from the owners, they are providing funds with which to operate their business before it is profitable or needs extra money, which is clearly a good thing (Look! Wealthy people helping the common man!), and their return is compensation for that. Are you opposed to venture capital, for example, existing? It's clearly wealthy people investing, and equally clearly is putting that wealth towards the benefit of mankind.
Afterward, when companies are buying or selling stock that they think are more or less profitable between themselves, or between the owner, I see no reason why that should harm the worker. (I imagine there also must be arguments for why that helps economic efficiency, but they are not immediately coming to mind, and I've put enough effort into this already.)
Tipping
Ah, you're right. I hadn't taken into enough account that it was fine dining, and there's a limited supply of dining positions to go around, and the business can't just pay them less, as that's on the patrons.
Who would buy overpriced coconuts?
As detailed in my Starbucks comments, there’s strong evidence that consumers are unwilling to buy things when they feel ripped off. Wealthy people go to Starbucks, not Rich Coffee Co. Starbucks can charge a premium but this premium exists with a ceiling, because why else would Starbucks be the location of choice for those who make 20x more than the median Starbucks consumers? If coconuts get too expensive, they may switch to different fruit. But let’s say all foods get equally expensive? The labor costs of supplying coconuts on the road will lead consumers to opt of the convenience and instead buy coconuts from the store. Any roadside coconut seller would simply have to make less money or leave the industry.
Yes, people do substitute, or buy elsewhere. I paid inadequate attention to the fact that roadside selling of coconuts did have the alternative of the store. It should be the case, though, that you can raise the prices a little—if you're selling your ultra-cheap coconuts vs your market value coconuts, vs your slightly higher than market value coconuts, you may get fewer people buying them, but you may be able to get some customers, as long as there's a cost to going to the store, or they don't know what the price at the store is.
But back to the example, let's reanalyze. Okay, so the price of labor is higher, so we will need to pay workers more. I was acting under the assumption that our profit is near zero, because there is roughly no barrier to entry to roadside coconut vendors—if it were too lucrative, others would join. Then, as we have near zero profit, we are forced to have fewer workers, or exit the market. If we have fewer workers, we aren't trying to sell quite as many coconuts. As fewer people are buying coconuts, the people who are buying it are the ones who want the roadside coconuts a little more than the marginal buyers before did. So the price is able to be a little higher. (I really ought to look as well at how this works with the competition.)
But I think to steelman the argument, “let’s say you own a grocery store. Grocers already compete against each other, yet the corporate owners still make lots of money. If employees had to be paid more, wouldn’t this just increase the baseline of goods, and they would still charge something on top to make profit?” I’d say yes, but paying grocery employees more increases the wages of all the workers who directly or indirectly compete with those employees.
The ones who wind up paying more without a concomitant increase in wages would be the top 5-10% of Americans who are already quite wealthy but are too far away from the competition of grocery store workers.
But what matters most isn't whether there's an increase in wages and costs, but what they are in relation to each other. Increasing pay and costs is just inflation. What we care about are real wages, not nominal wages. And I think this is a poor example for that, because grocery costs are regressive. Someone making a thousand times the money does not spend a thousand times as much on groceries. Suppose that groceries double relative to income, for everyone. It is those who have the largest share spent on groceries, that is, the poorest, with the most mouths to feed, who suffer most.
Small businesses acted as a middle man between producers/sellers and customers. Each small business had his own miniature Jeff Bezos, a hundred thousand CEOs who made maybe 160k a year rather than Bezos billions in earnings. (You can fit one million people making 160k a year within the Bezos net worth). Centralization will always split resources between fewer people.
But this whole time you've acted in contempt of the petit bourgeois as well. You, for some reason, want the roadside coconut seller to lose money.
Nevertheless, what you said is correct. Now, why is it bad? Amazon provides more value than those small businesses did.
There are then some obscure factors that an economist would never guess, like how these small businesses lived within close proximity to their employees and knew them personally and hired among families/friends, meaning they have to see the humanity in the person they are either benefiting or screwing in pay.
What is "screwing in pay"?
Are they paying at or above market value? Then there's no better anywhere else. Are they paying below market value? Then those workers should be able to leave for better opportunities.
Or are you saying that there's some just price for labor, above what the market pays? What is it?
Minimum wages, when binding, lead to unemployment, but that seems not to be what you are suggesting; you would rather there be fewer workers. (Oh, yes. Why do you want higher TFR again, then?) But on the whole, I don't know that that works. The prosperity that we live in now is built by the labor of humanity; removing people concentrates the spoils, but decreases them.
And of course, lower costs of labor allows businesses that otherwise couldn't to prosper.
Everyone in the lower/middle class competes in a way with the owners of these small businesses. A worker when deciding their career path would say something like, “I can open up a video rental store or I could become an accountant; I could become an accountant or I could open up a coffee shop…” And then of course, the employer knows this, and to retain employees must pay them more, because they can leave and go elsewhere.
So if I understand you rightly, what you are saying is that Amazon leads to a drop in wages, because there is now no longer another option of making a small business. So yes, the effect of decreasing the amount of small business does depress wages; of course, the direct employment has the opposite effect.
But again, does this mean it is bad? Let's suppose that there were a free, instant teleportation device. This is far better than Amazon—zero cost, 1 minute shipping. Would you really want this banned? It's not like people don't have other sectors that they can work in. (And if you think they might not be able to switch professions, why is using less efficient means of technology better than the other options, like private charity or government welfare?) (If you've never read Bastiat's Candlemaker's Petition, it's amusing.)
The ones with high wealth inequality, I do.
Okay, so the problem is not insofar as they harm competitors, right? You see the problem to be that they increase inequality.
But why is that bad? In particular, why is that so bad that it outweighs all the good they do?
Further, is there a limit? How much inequality is okay? Surely they shouldn't distribute it all?
Felagund
8mo ago
To be clear, they do think most of the actions done on account of their theory should be able to be appealed.
How is the argument that it's self-executing assuming the conclusion? They argue that the text supports that, especially in comparison with other texts, like the age requirements, I believe. Do you have a problem with any part of the constitution being self-enacting?
Felagund
8mo ago
To be clear, the authors are not stating that state officials can just summarily decide. They're rather saying they can make initial determinations, which can be followed by judicial review as needed. (Although it looks like that's muddied a bit, since they think the proper procedure might vary state by state??)
Felagund
9mo ago
I'm not legally knowledgeable to make an informed evaluation of whether they're right here, but here's what they say:
On page 51, in a footnote, they list in support of their view, that both those at the time of its passage, both those in favor and those opposed considered that it was, in effect, a bill of attainder and an ex post facto law.
On pages 53-54, they argue that it's not a bill (since it's not congressional but constitutional), and it's not attainder, (since ineligibility from office shouldn't be considered a legal punishment).
All this was in the context of a section in which they argue that to the extent that it disagrees with earlier provisions, it supersedes them.
Felagund
9mo ago
I can't respond to the first half until I'm able to access the pdf again, since that's still not working, last I checked.
But to the ending, they might be persuaded that this could present at least the possibility that it might be the correct and legal thing to do—there's no way the indictments would disqualify, and the impeachments weren't agreed to by the margin required in the Senate.
Felagund
9mo ago
Right, but things like not even being listed on the ballot in some states could be big.
Felagund
9mo ago
Do note, Most Christians believe that most Christians (not them) are going to hell.
Not exactly true. Catholics have a doctrine of invincible ignorance, whereby non-Catholics can be saved (especially post-Vatican II), and protestants don't generally have a "one true denomination," rather thinking that theirs is the most faithful, and others are Christians, just ones mistaken in some respects.
Another thing that confuses me. How do Christians square off human agency against belief in God and his plan?
Well, two things. First, he tells us to do things, so… Second, God generally works through means. So you're the agent in working out God's plan.
I'm not materialistic, but the hedonistic treadmill, lifestyle creep and trends are real things.
Surely you wouldn't apply this to heaven or hell?
The increasing lack of omni-potence of the Christian God does not inspire a lot of confidence.
Self-imposed restrictions. This is only required because of other requirements God's imposed on himself as to how to treat humans. It's not a lack of power, it's that there are other requirements that have to be kept as well.
Felagund
9mo ago
God's active, doing things, but not changing, exactly. Maybe changing in relation to other things, but not in relation to himself. If you think that's unbiblical, I have a quote for you: "I, the LORD, do not change." And another: "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever"
Felagund
9mo ago
Your hypothesis is that they all hallucinated the same thing, non-miraculously? Seems implausible to me.
Felagund
9mo ago
Yes, according to Christianity, and all Christians too (although they're being fixed over time).
Felagund
9mo ago
Lack of belief is ancient. See Psalm 14/53: "The fool says in his heart, there is no God…"
It's also not new that there's a social component. That too has always been the case. Do you think the Christians of the early first millenium did not have status play any subtle effect? What about the protestants or catholics in the pamphlet wars of the reformation? Both of these groups died for their faiths, but you would have them be insincere.
Felagund
10mo ago
The US also has the median voter theorem applying. But the primary process ends up pushing more extreme candidates to the fore, and then you try to paint the other side as extreme to persuade the median voter to go for you.
Felagund
10mo ago
Caplan literally listed Jews in that list of groups that scare him.
It's pretty clear that he fears most groups, and what he actually wants is power to be shattered in such a way that no one can cause too great disasters with it.
Felagund
11mo ago
No it doesn't depend on a multiverse at all. (Does all statistical reasoning require multiverses to exist?) It only requires a belief that the universe we see is one example of the set of all possible (imaginable) universes.
It does require it, I think.
One draw from a haystack vs 100000000000000 draws will have different chances of hitting the needle.
If only one universe exists, and most possible universes are very non-conducive to life, it should be surprising to us that we exist, since that seems so unlikely. At that point, we should be looking for explanations that might make it more likely, like multiverses or theism, or it being necessary that the universe be that way, or actually, most universes are conducive to life after all. But we can't just say that in worlds where we woke up it would look like worlds where we might be able to wake up, because the really surprising thing here isn't that but why the hell did we wake up at all, if we are indeed in the only universe, which should by every expectation be very hostile to life. (note, I'm assuming those two things, not asserting them here)
Felagund
11mo ago
Legally, this sort of thing could be relevant, I suppose, and it could be relevant in those relatively unusual cases, but yes, ordinarily it's not difficult.
However, transitioning probably puts the person into an unusual case, where it does take some work to decide how to handle things, because of effects of hormones.
Felagund
11mo ago
I think it would require multiverses. Yes, it proves rather trivially that you are in the kind of universe in which life exists, but it doesn't provide reasoning for why we should expect that universe to exist. A multiverse should be capable of providing the second, assuming that the multiverse is the sort of multiverse that can do that, I would think?
Felagund
1yr ago
Doing this would have all sorts of constitutional issues. What I imagine would be more possible would be lowering the voting age to 0, and making sure that parents are allowed to help their children out with voting if they need it. Of course, this would still have negative effects, like letting teenagers vote will often not be ideal, but I think I would be in favor of such a policy?
I'm not really convinced that this will be amenable to everyone, though. I think a lot of people will go just have a snap judgment of it being bad or undemocratic, even though it's arguably not at all either of those. And it would definitely be quickly politicized, with those who stand to gain political power in favor and those opposed against.
In America, since the 26th amendment only sets 18 as the minimum voting age and not the maximum, I think any state might be able to institute this at will, assuming the state constitution allowed it?
Felagund
1yr ago
But I'm not sure that it is, given what I said in the second paragraph there, that this is the sort of thing that might lastingly affect how you view someone, even if you know that it is fake. I might be wrong there, but that seems plausible to me, and that would mean that while, sure, maybe it would get rid of whatever legal claims you could make, just saying that it's fake might not entirely work to prevent it from producing the harmful effects.
Humans aren't perfect Bayesian intelligences, and this might be one place where the differences show up, maybe.
Felagund
1yr ago
Among the responses to this post, one thing that I saw several times was that deepfakes do not affect the person they are made of, and so are ethical, or at the very least, there's no case for regulating them. But I think, as was mentioned at least once, that there is a case to be made that they are comparable to libel. That is, they are able to distort the reputations of people in a negative way. This is bad, and I think is something that can be pointed to as a harm to the person in question.
Furthermore, I think that the graphic nature of a deepfake would probably make it have a more substantial and lasting effect on the perception of someone in the eyes of its viewers than would merely verbal allegations, once fabrications of both varieties were learned to be wrong.
I don't think this is a complete answer to what's going on with my moral intuitions here, because I have a similar gut feeling in this case to someone dreaming up, rather than fabricating, illicit scenarios with someone, which means my intuitions are probably not quite the same as what I have written above, and this is probably to some extent a justification of those intuitions, but I still think this is at least a facet of what is going on that is worth considering.
It's also probably worth keeping in mind that a lot of people care a lot about what people think of them as an end-in-itself sort of thing, even aside from tangible effects on their lives. People want to be liked, respected, etc.
Felagund
5d ago
To the owner of the self-driving car would be another option, maybe? This seems like it would better work with cars that have a full self-driving mode, but could also be driven ordinarily.
I'm not convinced that self-driving cars would be banned, instead of just way more expensive. It would depend on how much liability they would tend to have.
That's probably fair. That said, a favorable supreme court ruling might be able to make a little of a difference. The law as it exists is clear enough, just badly misinterpreted. I'd be interested in seeing the effort posts. Could they mandate some standard of evidence, with it specified what sorts of things could count? (explicit evidence of intent counts, ratios that are off does not)
If legislators really wanted to rein in rogue agencies, I bet being able to sue individual employees for agency misbehavior that they participated in would do the trick, though that could be kind of extreme and lead to further breakdown of the government.
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