FtSoA
3d ago
Slavery was legal and then made illegal in the West. As a matter of classic liberalism in terms of morality, it was never great to treat some humans as property since that's pretty darn coercive. Economically, coercion usually is not very efficient.
At no point do I or would I say a policy intervention is never called for. I am not an anarcho-capitalist. Some externalities demand government intervention. We should tax carbon and price congestion, for example.
FtSoA
3d ago
Well, there is no one "EA"; but broadly speaking EA exists within the liberal democratic view of human rights. So "unbounded consequentialism" isn't actually on the menu for policy interventions.
I'm personally a rule utilitarian / classic liberal, so I care about specific classic (negative) human rights and fostering material progress. So I like a lot of what EA is all about, but I have my differences. I do not like philosophical ignorant veils and ponds of kids, for example. In terms of rhetorical utility though, I very much enjoy using EA as a hammer to bludgeon progressives/leftists with.
I do not think it is fair to directly fault EA at large for Ziz and SBF. In the former case, they literally disavowed the individual and their ideas. In the latter case, they were too trusting (I just assume all crypto is a scam by default) and deserve some demerits for that, but SBF also fooled a great many worldly financial types outside of EA.
EA has no provision against people thinking of themselves as bringing about a utopia, and that makes it a dangerous philosophy.
Again, this is an extremely broad criticism that applies to many religions and ideologies.
FtSoA
3d ago
There's an entire world of rhetoric that's not just logical arguments. Use that.
There's the saying that you can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into. I don't 100% buy that because I myself have disproved it on major beliefs at least three times, but it is often true in practice.
The point of the essay was to, as much as possible, list clear facts that I don't think reasonable people can disagree with on an object level. Using much rhetoric would defeat the style of trying to list clear facts. (To my knowledge, there isn't such a list of these facts all in one place [or a current one, at least]. If there were, I'd have written something different.)
There's no one single way to convince a particular person of any given thing at any given time. I acknowledge my approach has the tradeoffs it does. (Part of my worldview is acknowledging tradeoffs.) Plus, rhetoric is typically more words and my list was already pretty dang long, practically speaking.
Also, if we're debating the metalevel relative merits of persuasive strategies using the written word, rhetoric is a symmetric weapon. For example, Marxists can wax poetic about solving inequality just us much as I can lovingly describe personal liberty. I think you could call both Adam Smith and Karl Marx talented writers in terms of style. But as soon as we start talking about facts I get to beat Marxists to death with empirical results and basic math.
You got pretty close, but then Trump laughed your guy out of the room after using him.
One thing I will say for Trump is that he does seem to be restrained by "numba go down." That doesn't help avoid the subtler long term damage to growth, but if certain other presidents had cared about market reactions we'd be a richer country. Shame about DOGE being mostly a clown show.
It would be excellent if SCOTUS is able to overturn certain very bad no good decisions that led to significant government intervention.
FtSoA
3d ago
Ask and ... you know the rest.
https://www.themotte.org/post/2277/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/352627?context=8#context
FtSoA
3d ago
Good work I'd say. Thank you.
For 6, I don't believe the dollar's relative value is a major issue for decades of trends.
FtSoA
3d ago
People have been killed in the name of EA ideas.
Such as? If we're referring to the Ziz stuff then well that's not going to cut it for me in that they were not part of "EA" in any meaningful sense for a long time before the real insanity began.
But also, plenty of people have been killed in the name of classic liberal ideas.
I, for one, think that if you gave soviet levels of power to the shrimp welfare people, they would be very unwise with it. I don't think that's an unreasonable view.
Probably! I can't get over that Classic Environmentalism is anti-interventionist to the point some want humanity to disappear, and then some EA types are so interventionist they want to basically eliminate nature because of the inherent suffering.
FtSoA
3d ago
I think Mises is right in the final analysis
I'm more of a Hayek and Friedman guy myself. Utilitarianism libertarianism > deontological libertarianism.
but this is bad argumentation for your stated goal because progressives do not share the basic priors that make these numbers convincing to you
The para re: policy effectiveness sets that up a basic shared prior of caring about means and ends.
If someone fundamentally does not care about measuring ROI of policy interventions, then what can one do. One can lead a horse to facts...
Moreover, they have their own numbers that you don't find convincing.
Not remotely good ones they don't. I actually read Capital in the 21st Century and I've taken econ courses from Marxists, so I'm pretty familiar with the other side of the aisle here.
That's kinda my whole thesis here: I used to accept those numbers as part as that narrative. Then I learned better.
Without that, you are in danger of merely engaging in congratulating your own side for having a worldview that correctly fits their perception of the world.
My "side" here is currently out of power or even major influence in either of the two major U.S. political parties right now.
Being right is clearly insufficient!
FtSoA
3d ago
That there are some "pure" altruists in EA is not what I am picking at. The essays I reference are targeted at that very phenomenon because it is a thing some people do. Selection effects are what they are. You are making points without the knowledge of what is already been discussed on the topic. Go google "avoiding EA burnout" and you'll find a plenty of stuff on this front.
The thing I am pointing at is that comparing Soviet anything to EA is apples to hand grenades. Donors are not coerced. OpenPhil analysts are not employees of the state, and aimed at "doing the most good" insofar as they can figure that out. The failure mode that is most apt is the standard "NGO Industrial Complex" where organizations exist to exist, not to actually solve the problem in their mission statement.
FtSoA
3d ago
Is there an easy way to port over a substack article with images and links?
I don't see one, so I tried to provide enough context to tell someone whether they might want to click or not.
FtSoA
3d ago
K-12 teachers get a solidly large does of lefty canon exposure, and a default assumption of "government intervention to fix things is good and necessary."
Even in a quite red state decades ago, my teachers were disproportionately left of center.
FtSoA
3d ago
I think "pure altruism" is a strawmanning of EA in general and Open Philanthropy in particular. One of EA's main tenets is that the traditional hyperfocus on overhead costs of charities is unhelpful as a measure of actual efficacy. If you want smart, driven people to do good work in allocating resources, paying them something like market rate is advisable. Otherwise, you're selecting on something other than merely talent for the job.
Of course, it's always possible OpenPhil is actually bad at their stated mission for whatever reason, including design flaws. So having different models out there, like volunteer crowdsourcing, is a good thing.
Famously, the Soviets did not rely on charitable giving to fund their efforts. Donors can always stop donating.
Scott has addressed this kind of thing--how much altruism is mandated or what is sufficiently pure--multiple times. Numerous essay in EA Land focus on the emotional unsustainability of pure altruism.
Some level of partiality/self-interest is allowable on pragmatic grounds alone. Martyrdom should not be a standard requirement.
FtSoA
3d ago
In my latest essay, I try to list the major points I'm aware of that puncture the progressive narrative on economics, without trying to directly touch on the Culture War's social fronts.
Reality Has a Poorly Recognized Classical Liberal Bias
I think most people here have enough exposure to libertarianism that they are at least aware of these issues (even if they don't agree with them). If you think I missed one or I'm somehow dead wrong please do indicate so.
FtSoA
3d ago
I guess it depends on what your standard for pulls is
I think it's pretty clear that the P320 stock trigger pull is standard for its class. It does not have a trigger safety, of course, and in general striker pistols are far lighter than a DA pull. Which is why Glock Leg was such a thing when police departments started moving away from revolvers and DA/SA pistols.
Imagine if this had happened in the present social media era: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1998/11/18/armed-and-unready/419a50bf-23b0-4175-93ee-33211044c8df/
the P320 did poorly on the drop safety tests resulting in a redesign
The P320 passed industry drop-safe testing standards. Through extra testing outside those standards, it was late found a very particular kind of drop did cause an issue. The XM17 drop testing found essentially the same issue with the same fix--lighter parts to reduce inertia issues.
https://thrumylens.org/featured/my-thoughts-on-the-sig-p320-30-degree-drop-failure/
some rather unique elements to its design such as a fully cocked striker on recoil that no one else has done (including Sig on their other guns like the P365)
As an overly committed P365 owner, I assure you they are also fully cocked. While broadly similar, it is a different FCU design. For one thing, the rails on the P365 go the whole length of the FCU.
but I havent heard much about any of their testing, there doesnt appear to be a whole lot of it done
Seriously? This is probably the most tested gun in history between common adoption worldwide in militaries and LE agencies, plus a huge private market. And now several years of ongoing drama.
Whatever the problem is, it's nonobvious because you have all kinds of people trying to find it. My understanding is that this is the likely explanation for the ones firing in holsters (found in YouTube comments):
Here’s how it goes off uncommanded: grip modules too tight, and loose slide/frame lockups. This is the combination. The trigger bar doesn’t move freely in the grip module, and can hang up with trigger partially pulled. This defeats the striker safety. Then, a loose slide rocking on the FCU rails pulls the striker off the seer and… bang. It’s a problem with tolerances- but you need this exact combination of bad tolerances to have a problem. It’s not difficult to do at all, but you need to mix/match FCUs and grips until you get the magic combo. It’s not ONE flaw, it’s two. And you require BOTH to make it unsafe.
At the end of the day, Sig has handled this poorly and, even if I discount like 50% of the alleged uncommanded discharges as actually negligent discharges, there's some kind of manufacturing/design/wear/tolerance flaw that is insufficiently rare and so the problem isn't going away. If I were Sig, I'd probably halt all P320 production, figure out some kind of safety field test to identify units with the flaw(s), and then not resume production until a full fix was in place.
On the other hand, if it turns out the USAF incident was actually not as popularly described (I'm seeing some reports it was airmen fooling around), then a lot of people should eat some crow.
FtSoA
4d ago
Doesn't the stock P320 have about the same trigger pull weight as other in its class? Glocks are like 5.5 lbs and the M18 is like 5.5 to 7 lbs from what I'm seeing.
The "1mm of travel" is not being done at the regular point of measurement if he's jamming shit up top after pre-travel. That's way more movement down where the finger engages the shoe.
Basic errors like this are why I have a hard time taking the critics here seriously.
Engaging the sear nearly to the point of firing and then fucking with it is going to cause problems if tolerances are off from either defects or wear issues. I'm perfectly willing to believe manufacturing/wear defects combined with the inherent design of the cocked striker lead to these problems. That would explain why they're rare.
Also, looking at this Wyoming Gun Project specimen what the hell is wrong with his FCU rails being bent so much? That's not normal. I only have P365s, which is a broadly similar FCU design, and there's nowhere near that level of give, loaded or empty. Like his gun is clearly not safe, but it's an old and clearly beat-to-shit .45 and not an M18. It seems obvious to me that the amount of movement in the slide allows the partially engaged sear to move off the correct path and so it slips.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=OYoxraSP5pY
And no, partially engaging the sear then jostling the gun absolutely should not result in a discharge, thats the whole point behind drop and firing pin safeties. Except as newer videos reveal, the P320s firing pin safety does not actually block the firing pin, and the drop safety is easily defeated by any slide canting, which occurs even under normal trigger pulls.
The issue here is that this gun has like 3 million copies in the U.S. and has undergone numerous rigorous testing and trials. So when some video pops up showing "wow obviously this gun is bad when I fuck with it" I dismiss it by default, because if the issue was so obvious we would 1) see way more issues than we do and 2) this all would have been figured out by now.
FtSoA
4d ago
Right off the bat, let's see if you can admit a clear factual error or two. I really should have done this before writing the rest, but ah well.
Do you acknowledge that Iran's ballistic missile production facilities and launchers are not all underground? This is a very easy one.
Do you acknowledge that the volume of Iran's launches against Israel dropped off considerably? Here's a clue: https://jinsa.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Iranian-Ballistic-Missile-Estimates-6-26-2025-6.pdf
Frankly it's remarkable to see someone try to flip the script on one of the most one-sided wars in history, but then I suppose the Egyptians tried to pretend they had won the Yom Kippur War.
Also, both Israeli casualty reports and Qassam combat footage overwhelmingly shows the use of indigenous IEDs and other weapons that could only be manufactured locally. It would be silly for a cell based organization like Hamas to depend on imports.
Never did I say the majority of their stock was Iranian. But Iran has been a major supporter for decades.
The IDF very clearly tried to take Al-Khiam for a photo-op at the former detention center and failed.
That's not particularly relevant in evaluating the overall status at the end of the conflict, where Israel overwhelmingly kicked Hezbollah in the nuts by killing its leader, a bunch of its personnel, maimed a shit ton more of them, and also significantly reduced their missile stockpile, all while taking relatively light casualties and rendering the missile threat mostly ineffective.
Tellingly, they didn't do much to help out their pals in Tehran. Weird way to behave if actually they weren't hurting so badly. Kinda defeats the point of having an alliance.
If Iran were legitimately totally defenseless then why would Israel care about what Trump thinks?
Why would Israel care about what it's single most important ally thinks about a conflict it has been assisting with? Seriously? The stuff in Syria is small potatoes.
On the flipside, they had drones that were shot down so it's just as easy to imagine that Netanyahu simply didn't bother taking the risk. In this case the burden of proof that Israel was dropping bombs in Iranian airspace is on you, since basically all of the identified strikes look like the result of air launched missiles, not bombs.
The most retarded bit of logic here is that if we, for the sake of argument, grant that you're correct about only IAF drones poking around Iranian airspace then, wow, the IAF is really capable of doing a lot of damage to buildings using air-launched missiles at scale. Also, hitting the Mashhad airport at 1400 miles strongly implies operating within Iranian airspace even with ALBMs.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/israels-air-superiority-lets-strike-191600442.html
So all those photos of IAF aircraft loaded with bombs were just for propaganda purposes? Why? Who are they trying to convince? The U.S. and Iranian militaries know the reality regardless.
There's no good reason to believe the IAF is lying here, but you need it to fit your highly evidence-challenged view that actually Iran was the one winning this conflict. The real irony here is that the Iranians don't contest that the IAF was operating in Iranian airspace, they just pretended to shoot an F-35 or two down. You're doing more work than even the Iranian propagandists!
On the flipside, they had drones that were shot down so it's just as easy to imagine that Netanyahu simply didn't bother taking the risk. In this case the burden of proof that Israel was dropping bombs in Iranian airspace is on you, since basically all of the identified strikes look like the result of air launched missiles, not bombs.
Why send drones on obvious suicide missions if air defenses are not suppressed much at all?
The IAF demolished large buildings and took out at least one command bunker, we know. Hard and expensive to do that with merely missiles.
How many missiles do ya reckon this took? Would the IAF really use its fancy LORAs on a TV broadcaster?
Elbit Systems' share price rose by 5.43% in New York on Friday, and is currently up 5.94% on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.
https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-israeli-us-weapons-prove-themselves-in-iran-strikes-1001512893
There's plenty of evidence Israel dropped bombs in Iran, just none you find compelling enough that you have to accept it. You resist the obvious because your narrative collapses if actually the IAF did have air dominance and you can pretend they were going to run out of ALBMs before Iran ran out of its ballistic missiles.
Every indication is that he had no problem with Israel one sidedly bombing Iran forever, it was only when Iran started landing counterpunches that he became interested in deescalation.
Trump's change in preference came right after the U.S. strikes on the nuclear facilities, obviously. The volume of Iranian missile strikes was going down and Israel was not taking meaningful damage relative to Iran.
On the first day Israel went for a decapitation strike followed by regime change
Israel did not expect to get regime change that easily. Come on now. As far as we know, the Supreme Leader was not targeted (whether by impossibility or choice I'm not sure).
they reorganized and proceeded to return fire in sufficient volume to break Israeli AD nearly every day. They hit strategic sites at will
No, they very much did not. All those missiles, so few strategic sites hit. Blowing up grandmas doesn't win wars, even when they were able to do that.
on day 12 they were reduced to hitting a giant clock in Tehran
This is backwards logic. The IAF could afford to start hitting secondary targets on day 12 because they had been so successful the previous 11 days. It's not like they suddenly couldn't hit Tehran, as you've pointed out.
Had the war continued it would have continued to get worse and worse for Israel. Fortunately Israel was able to leverage the threat of direct American offensive involvement beyond choreographed bombings that result in zero injuries, otherwise the Iranians would have had little reason to agree to a deal.
There was no "deal" here. It was just an unofficial ceasefire. If Iran was on the verge of really turning the tide against their main enemy who did a surprise attack and killed a bunch of its top leaders and destroyed a bunch of their military and nuclear sites, why would they have stopped instead of getting even? They knew the U.S. really did not want to get drawn in beyond the attack on the nuclear sites. Why would Iran let Israel get away with it?
FtSoA
5d ago
It's conceivable in principle those who found him lied about intentional or incompetent acts.
I have no idea about this particular case. Nothing has been revealed, officially. It's a best practice to always keep the business end of a gun pointed in the safest direction possible. (It strikes me as strange he would take his gun+holster off and set in on a table pointing right back at him.) Things can get caught in holsters. Glock Leg has been a thing for quite some time now. Base rates being what they are, my bet is on some form of user error over mechanical failure.
Oh, absolutely. There was a phenomenon in the late '80s and into the '90s known as a Glock leg or a Glock thigh or a Glock knee. What that referred to was the tendency of some police officers who would grab the gun from their holster and immediately put their finger on the trigger. They were used to the much heavier trigger pull of a revolver, and just by depressing the - putting a little bit of pressure on the Glock's trigger, they'd shoot themselves in the leg.
FtSoA
5d ago
Goddamn thanks for letting me know about that fun new infohazard I can generate on demand.
FtSoA
5d ago
The M7 Rifle and M250 Automatic Rifle are currently being fielded across the Close Combat Force (CCB) to replace the M4A1 Carbine and M249 Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW) respectively.
It's a limited amount thus far, yes, but at least one operational unit has them in hand. Perhaps the Army will back out of its planned purchase of 100k+ of them, but there's no indication of that presently.
FtSoA
5d ago
One gun had an issue that has not been confirmed as the same issue for others, this FBI testing was using protocols that significantly modified the gun. Per Sig, further FBI testing did not find the faults.
https://www.outdoorlife.com/guns/fbi-report-sig-p320-uncommanded-discharge/
They mention, buried in the 31 page report, that the cop’s keys were in his dominant hand at the time of the discharge and they state the keys were able to fit into the holster and the trigger well and pull the trigger with effort. Further, they have a photo in the report of there being a large gouge in the trigger well from the cops keys. While they don’t directly say that it’s the cop’s fault, they do directly state in the conclusion that there is not definitive evidence that a uncommanded discharge occurred or could be reliably recreated without extensive modification to the FCU.
https://old.reddit.com/r/Firearms/comments/1luobo5/protraband_posts_fbi_file_on_p320m18/
FtSoA
5d ago
"Direct action guys" are a tiny percentage of the U.S. military and frequently do not use standard-issue small arms because they have their own inventory.
I am pretty sure thought that they cannot simply use an actual personally owned weapon for a bunch of reasons about logistics and liability. Why would they pay out of pocket when they get large budgets for sweet custom weaponry?
Compared to the M9 safety, the ergonomics are better, but it's true the direction is different and there's no red dot. With the M9, I think it was SOP to carry safety off outside the wire. Not sure what it is for the M18, but it's pretty common in general to holster with the safety engaged and then disengage it. (The manual safety is apparently not a relevant factor for the discharges.)
FtSoA
5d ago
People do lie about the reasons for things happening.
The fact that the P320 has the issues it does makes it easy for anyone to just blame it on the gun.
FtSoA
5d ago
why military people I know who are issued the M17/M18 don't actually use it
Yeah, ok, sure. Wait until you find out about the M9. Ironically, the M11 (a Sig hammer pistol) did not have a manual safety, just a decocker. (It was not fielded at scale.)
Also, the Glock submission competing with the P320 did have a manual thumb safety, because that was an Army requirement.
https://www.military.com/kitup/2018/01/02/glock-unveils-new-pistol-inspired-army-mhs-program.html
FtSoA
5d ago
That screw is representing a hell of a lot more than "slight pressure" from the holster. It's moving 1mm past the pretravel as measured from the top of the shoe. That's a lot.
Having the sear engaged that much and then jostling the gun is not going to go well on a variety of firearms.
https://www.google.com/search?q=avoiding+effective+altruism+burnout
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