Thinking that Democrats wanting to hurt Republicans explains the bulk of Democrat behavior is neither charitable nor clear. That was OP's thesis: not that it was a motive but that it was the chief driver of all their behavior.
KnotGodel
2mo ago
Please proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be
Virtually no one here takes that rule seriously.
Many people on this forum definitely consider "the elites" an outgroup.
The comment you chose in particular is as clear an example of outgroup bashing as its possible to be. You can tell because it makes vague negative claims without any evidence for the near exclusive purpose of venting.
Edit:
If @Azth's were writing about them in this way — or implying anyone reading this forum or talking to him thinks it's fine if peasants die — he'd be modded within a few hours.
This, I agree with. The mods have little tolerance for putting words in others' mouths.
KnotGodel
1yr ago
Pro-CDC content like what? What is there lately worth praising the CDC for?
Well, for instance, 85% of the CDC's budget is in grant-making, which you can view here. Much of it funds medical research. But, instead of focusing on that, this sub focuses on a one sentence change on one webpage in their enormous website. That is as pure an example of picking the bias needle out of the haystack as I can think of.
Yes, if you wanted to demonstrate bias, use the Internet Archive, and write a scraper to compare all the webpages archived for the CDC. Check in, say, 2019 and now. Look at the changes and compute the percent that demonstrate leftward biased - you could use a differ and a sentiment NPL model. This is quite do-able for a software engineer and, if open-sourced, would be strong evidence of leftward bias in the CDC. I don't expect anyone in this forum to do it, because it's funner to complain about terrible "evidence" than collect strong evidence against your outgroup. I won't do it, because I don't actually care if the CDC is biased - I just unhealthily care about how everyone here is using this silly innocuous event as evidence of deep instituitonal bias, because that is just poor reasoning hygiene that I thought we were all supposed to be working to above.
Plus they still caved
No, they didn't. The CDC pushed back in those emails and refused to include a study the advocate suggested. Again, not anything anyone in this forum apparently cared enough to notice or signal boost.
compare to all the times e.g. bureaucrats under the Trump admin just straight-up ignored instructions....
You see, this is my point. Either
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Y'all are using this as evidence of bias. In which case, I think you're wrong, as I've been arguing.
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Y'all pre-supposing bias and then saying, "since we know the CDC is biased, this isn't surprising." But if that's the case, this entire thread is nothing more than an elaborate "Boo outgroup" and should be nuked by the mods.
A small sample size is not as good as a large sample, but that doesn't make it worthless.
True, but the fact that I personally don't have an example of right-wing advocacy going is then easily explaiend.
Plus, the mere fact that leaking requires a motive doesn't mean it's necessarily biased.
Well, biased towards the extremes at the very least. Otherwise, why leak it?
KnotGodel
1yr ago
Virtually the entire point of altruistic charity is to give people things they couldn't otherwise afford themselves. That is, distributing goods/services that aren't otherwise profitable.
But even if you don't care about that, malaria nets have positive externalities, which means even a myopic free-market promoter should see the obvious value here.
Finally, again, why the double standard? You don't ask churches why they don't set up farms instead of staff food kitchens. You might retort that EAs claim to care about effectiveness, but you have given no actual evidence to think your plan is better from a utilitarian or NPV perspective.
A point I haven't seen at all in this forum is the impact of gerrymandering.
Let X = (Republican votes) / (Republican votes + Democrat votes)
Let Y = % of House seats for Republicans
After an essentially tied election in 2000, Y averaged* 0.6pp higher than X during the 2000s.
After a historic Republican victory in 2010, Y averaged 3.8pp higher than X during the 2010s.
After a medium Democratic victory in 2020, Y is (based on this election so far) 1.5pp lower than X.
During the 2000s and 2010s, X was only lower than Y once: during the historic 2008 Democratic victory, which, iirc, overwhelmed gerrymandering defenses such that it made them counterproductive. As a result, Democrats were advantaged a whopping 3.5pp during that election.
tl;dr - it looks like Republicans successfully gerrymandered the 2010s and gained about 17 seats each election in the House as a result. Based on this election, it looks like gerrymandering has shifted this advantage to Democrats and will give them about 8 seats each election during the 2020s.
[ /u/zeke5123 you may be interested in this regarding republican under/over-performance relative to the popular vote ]
*I'm using the median here
KnotGodel
1yr ago
If something goes wrong, they run. If a citizen ever lays hands on these individuals, we send in the real police to do a summary execution.
I looked this up in case I misunderstood:
Summary Execution
A summary execution is an execution in which a person is accused of a crime and immediately killed without the benefit of a full and fair trial.
I don't much like ideas that lead a cop killing someone kneeling and hand-cuffed without any kind of trial. I really don't like the idea that a non-cop can just claim someone slapped them and this results in summary execution.
KnotGodel
1yr ago
Left-wing of course is an organizational structure where low performers pledge their loyalty to managers in exchange for loot
What makes any of that "left-wing"?
KnotGodel
1mo ago
You can also be on the lookout for different games to play.
Do you mean leaving the company and/or deciding to put your energy into non-work things? Or something else?
leaders don't really aggregate the knowledge of their followers.
Hmm. I'm imagining something like an explicit set of users who are gatekeepers, so if I have a 10x idea, I can just convince one person to have The Powers That Be consider it? Something along those lines?
Some which could come to mind...
I think it's important to decide whether we're judging these from the insider or the outside.
If you went to work for Apple, I'm feel pretty sure you'd come away thinking it is woefully incompetent. From the outside, however, it largely appears competent. Not unlike the other FAANG companies imo. Likewise, if you actually worked as a priest in the Catholic Church in Spain in the 20th century, I'd be shocked if you felt this was what "blistering, white-hot competence" looked like. From the outside, I think EA is pretty clear amazingly competent, saving more counterfactual lives per dollar than nearly any other organization, even if you round everything hard-to-value to zero. From the inside however, ...
Re EA being less effective. Alas, it is tedious, but I fear the only way for us to reach a common understanding is point by point, starting with
The Forum
First, re moderation policy - this is something we discuss occasionally here. Blunt people think it's crazy to mod someone just because they were blunt - it drives away such people and we lose their valuable opinions! Other people think the reveres is more powerful: blunt people drive away blunt-averse people and cause the loss of their valuable opinions. I'm unfamiliar with any actual evidence on the matter.
Next, spending. The comment you link to explicitly says they would not accept 2x funding, which imo puts them heads and shoulders above the default of outside society (e.g. a team at a S&P 500 company, in the government, or at a typical nonprofit). I personally put a fair amount of weight on that kind of signal (I loved that Evidence Action closed down their bussing program for not-enough-impact reasons). I think its quite plausible that the forum's benefit of fostering an EA community creates new EAs and retains old ones to the extent that the value outweighs the $2m cost.
That being said, I think you are probably correct in your own comment in that thread in pointing out there is a margin-average distinction being elided, so the 2m probably really is too high.
That comment also links to a page on how they're trying to have impact. The task they rate as the most promising is running job ads on the forum. The second-most promising is helping recruiters find potential candidates. Those seem reasonably valuable to me, but, I'd still guess the EV is less than $2m.
That being said, there are some ameliorating factors:
- The whole analysis depends on how much you think EA is money-constrained versus talent-constrained - fwiw Scott leans more towards the latter. FWIW, this takes the cake for the biggest misconception that new-to-EA people have - that money-constraints are the primary issue.
- Building on that, the budget appears to have absolutely ballooned with the help of FTX funding. If this is true, it's unclear what exactly the counterfactual alternative was - i.e. was this money earmarked specifically for this forum? for community outreach? idk. Certainly, SBF's donations were not entirely effectiveness-driven.
Ultimately, I'm inclined to agree that $2M is too much, without having context on how the budget was determined, I'm not sure how much of a black eye this should be on EA as a whole.
Criminal Justice Reform
When I went through Open Philanthropy's database of grants a couple years ago, I felt only about half its spending would fall under conventional Effective Altruist priorities (e.g. global health, animal welfare, X-risk). That is, I've felt for a couple years that Open Philanthropy is only about half-EA, which, to be clear is still dramatically better than the typical non-profit, but I don't personally them funding a cause as equivalent to the EA community thinking the cause is effective. #NoTrueScotsman
I'm going to be honest - I do not, tonight, have the time to go through the two "alternatives" links with the thoroughness they deserve
Depends on your definition of “caring”
¯\(ツ)/¯
As an example, I have a very specific explanation of how my caring has changed. You decided to simply assert that this change doesn’t count as “not caring” to you.
I could practice some “Outside View” and wonder whether you might be right - but then I remember that the Outside View presupposes the other person is actually adding valuable information and not just trying to “win” points at my expense
KnotGodel
4mo ago
Do you know that many Effective Altruists and LessWrong-style-rationalists are vegans? Seems like a pretty good place to start.
KnotGodel
4mo ago
- There's virtually no actual cost in having money depreciate slowly over time.
- This is a fully general argument in favor of greater economic volatility. If you believe that, you shouldn't just be arguing for a gold standard - you should be arguing for the government to artificially create recessions.
- If this is tyranny, sign me up for another!
- Plenty of governments had no issue borrowing enormous amounts during WWII, so I have a hard time viewing a gold standard as much of an impediment to that.
the heavy underemphasis on energy and housing I see as clear deliberate manipulation for instance
Let's look at the weights of the CPI-U as of 2022-Dec:
- 7.5% - Rent of primary residence
- 25.4% - Owners' equivalent rent of residences
- 3.6% - Household energy
- 3.3% - Motor fuel
I've ensured no overlap between the categories.
So, that's 32.9% of the CPI is housing and 6.9% is energy.
You believe these numbers are heavily underemphasized and are a "clear deliberate manipulation".
Please elaborate.
unemployment numbers... have been cooked to hell and back by essentially every government of every State.
Please elaborate.
KnotGodel
6mo ago
Again and again, I see people here assuming that because the press and twitter academics are biased, it obviously implies that stats nerds in the BEA and BLS are biased. But, again, I've never seen evidence for this.
KnotGodel
6mo ago
The one time someone tried to prove to me that the official data was too low by citing their own personal receipts, the receipts ended up matching the official data.
It would be great if one of the numerous people here making these claims had evidence that the CPI stats are being gamed instead of having to resorting to "academia and the media is biased => the BEA and BLS stats nerds are biased"
I don’t know what HylinkaGC or the rest are living like
Well, the one time he provided concrete examples of runaway inflation, his "lived experience" almost perfectly matched the official data. So, there's that...
KnotGodel
10mo ago
Whether the death happens to a victim or a perpetrator is not "less important". It's more important than just about everything else relevant to the situation.
You've made an assertion. Not an argument.
If I had two sons, and one son got drunk and punched someone at a bar while another got drunk and was punched by someone at a bar. I would not want to live in a world where the former was killed and the latter killed their assaulter. I'd much rather live in the alternative world where no one died. Which would you rather live in?
Also, using QALYs here at all produces bizarre results because it becomes much less bad to kill an older perpetrator than a younger one.
Again, I am not a blind utilitarian calculator. It is a model.
Tossing a punch at someone is an attempt to kill, or a reckless act that may kill, and should be treated as such
This is black-and-white thinking. There are gradations here that you are ignoring, because they are inconvenient to you. Those gradations are central to my argument, so I'm not sure how I'm supposed to respond here.
KnotGodel
11mo ago
As I see it, there are two possible explanations
Option One: He literally believes that US leaders wouldn't lift a finger if millions of their citizens were dying. This is absurd. No one not living in a cave could plausibly think that US leaders wouldn't lift a finger if millions of their citizens were dying. At the very least such a claim requires explanation/justification as per the rules:
Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be.
Option Two: He does not literally believe that US leaders wouldn't lift a finger if millions of their citizens were dying. In that case, the comment is much more inflammatory than necessary, again violating the rules.
I personally believe one of the most fundamental issues with political discourse today is that standards for evidence are far too low. So low that you will always find evidence that meets your bar, making it so your beliefs are determined more by your biases, social bubbles, and promotion algorithms - rather than the actual state of the evidence.
X is evidence for theory A or theory B if and only if
P(X | A) > P(X | B)
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The CDC is tweaked the wording after a neutral review of the evidence - a review prompted by activists.
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The CDC is biased and therefore gave in to activism, neglecting their duty to be neutral guardians of the truth.
Most of the "evidence" provided in this thread by other people, in my opinion, does not provide any actual evidence for (2) over (1). Conversely, the facts I've brought up are:
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The CDC ignored the activists until they were signal-boosted by the White House.
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The CDC dragged its feet for months.
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The CDC pushed back, arguing the activists' preferred studies were bad.
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The CDC's new wording doesn't even seem to be more liberal than the old wording.
This is all evidence in favor of (1) over (2) and is all being ignored in this thread.
So, what you characterize as "relentlessly tedious and nit-picky", I view as requiring people to actually justify their beliefs with evidence. I don't view myself as requiring isolated demands for charity/rigour - I see myself as requiring a universally reasonably high bar for evidence - a bar required if you actually want accurate beliefs. I don't see this as a vice.
You claim there is "decades of history here" that this community understands. What I've seen is decades of cherry-picked anecdotes that people have allowed themselves is believe counts as convincing evidence. This is not what a trustworthy understanding of the world should be based on. The fact this community upvotes groundless claims they like to +18 and downvote requests for a single citation to -6 reinforces my lack of trust in this community's "understanding" of issues.
Could I prove something? Maybe. I could write a scraper and scrape the current CDC website and compare that to the Internet Archive and code up some kind of sentiment NLP model to check for political bias in the diffs. But, seriously, I really don't care enough to do all that work. Everyone here apparently has a lot of emotions invested in the CDC being biased, but they aren't willing to do that either. This is where I suppose we talk about how all this is signaling and no one here actually cares about proving anything - it's all just intellectual masturbation - but I guess I'm autistic enough to want the masturbation to be done properly.
And, honestly, I think most of the people are doing Motte-and-Bailey shenanigans here. What they claim they are doing is providing evidence the CDC is biased. What they are actually doing is enjoying the bonding behavior of booing the out-group. Otherwise these self-proclaimed "high-decouplers" could distinguish "the CDC is biased" from "this is evidence the CDC is biased". But then my real sin was interrupting the equivalent of a pep rally.
[ I apologize for my exasperation. ]
KnotGodel
1yr ago
the interests of land and cattle are less silly, and more fundamental.
You believe the interests of people are less fundamental than the interests of cattle and land?
I assume not.
I assume you believe the interests of people are less fundamental than the interests of the owners of the cattle and land. Why do you believe that?
What makes a rancher's interests more intrinsically valuable than a plumber's, policeman's, teacher's, or doctor's?
KnotGodel
1yr ago
If the death penalty cost less than life, would death penalty opponents suddenly change their mind? I really doubt anyone is deciding this issue based on cost
I can think the death penalty's financial costs are sufficient reason to oppose it without thinking they're a necessary reason. That is, in no way, "insincere".
KnotGodel
1yr ago
I replied with some personal observations supporting IprayIam's claims, and you accused me of making shit up
I didn't accuse you of making shit up. I provided concrete verifiable evidence that your "personal observations" literally matched the expert metrics you were criticizing. If you're referring to my use of the term "cherrypicked", I literally apologized for that in the next comment:
Sorry, "cherrypicked" is the wrong word. I meant to say that I feel its likely the reason those goods took your attention is because they increased - not that you were intentionally cherrypicking.
.
to which I replied with a !remindme link. 6 months later when the link pops, we're looking at a 40 year high for inflation and you're pulling the "WeLl AkShUaLly ExPeRtS aGreE" bullshit yet again.
As I said at the time you made that remindme link:
No, we'll have an n=1 piece of data. We already have 18 years of 5-year TIPs data that should hold at least as much weight as this one example... You seem to be fundamentally misunderstanding me. I make no claims about what price a particular good will be at a particular time
So, no, I never agreed beforehand that your prediction would fail to occur. I never agreed to eat crow if it did occur. You merely asserted I should. Given that, it is bullshit for you to think I should be changing my mind and kowtowing to your superior wisdom.
somehow despite having made the call correctly I'm the one who needs to update my priors rather than you.
I am not asking you to "update your priors". I am asking you to simply acknowledge that
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the literal price changes you chose did in fact match the price sub-indices reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics
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therefore, your actual disagreement with the "ExPeRtS" computation of the CPI is almost entirely simply how much they weigh the subindices.
You haven't done either of these things. Instead, you continue to insult me. C’est la vie.
KnotGodel
1yr ago
should a person's income tax be based on the amount of money they theoretically could be earning, if they worked as much as possible in the most valuable field they are qualified for, in the location with the highest salary?
I, being one of the few hard-core utilitarians, actually support this in principle. In practice, I'm suspicious of the implementation details being carried out well enough to justify it (e.g. the risk of this destroying the Schelling point of free markets).
That being said, if I were to do it (as God Emperor), I just want to mention that I'd adjust the tax rates rather than the taxes themselves. For instance, suppose Alice is skilled enough to make $100k and Bob is skilled enough to make $40k. I might tax Bob 0% and Alice at 60%, thereby leaving Alice and Bob both at $40k if they maximize their economic potential. The reason essentially boils down to me believing a flat tax doesn't distort labor decisions.
Behind a veil of ignorance (before knowing their skills), they would both agree to my proposal compare to the alternative (43% flat tax on both).
For, I think, a somewhat powerful non-utilitarian intuition: Alice's skills are a lottery she won; Bob's lack of skills are a lottery he lost. Neither deserves their lot in life. It is fundamentally unfair that Alice can get the same life Bob has by working 2 days per week while Bob works all 5.
Are you indifferent between paying property taxes (as happens today) and the government literally seizing control of all lane?
If not, they are not equivalent, so stop saying they are equivalent.
You’re zooming out to a ridiculous extent. You may as well say “the government has a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, so they own everything, and we live under communism”
That level of abstraction is so useless as to not even be false.
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