KnotGodel
4mo ago
I'm saying psychologically health people don't see status as zero-sum.
I don't have to feel like I'm losing status if slaves are freed.
I don't have to feel like I'm losing status if I stop eating meat.
Any feeling that I'm losing status is a feature of my brain, not the world.
KnotGodel
4mo ago
You also don't have to feel like you are losing status if I fuck your wife in front of you, or force you to blow me, but I would suggest not doing so demonstrates a lack of self respect
IMO, the problem with both of those is not that I'm losing status.
KnotGodel
11mo ago
the problem is most easily solved by forcibly re-educating the peasants to say they love immigration
It's throw-away lines like this that make me avoid commenting here.
Then it's followed up by
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever, while the face says "unlike those intolerant right-wingers, I'm open-minded enough to appreciate boot culture and cuisine!"
Ahh, such steel-manning, such charity - definitely no booing outgroup here!
Trying to understand why people don't take selected macro statistics as gospel truth about their own lives is, to use a common phrase, extremely out of touch.
It depends on the purpose of the discussion.
Is it to discuss policy? Is it to discuss aggregate public perception? Averages matter.
Is it to vent? They don't.
The question to ask: why are we on this forum?
Is that a dodge, or are you actually saying that you wouldn't feel like you lost status if I banged your wife in front of you?
Could you maybe describe what "status" means to you?
I don't really walk around thinking "I should to X at work to gain status" or "I should make fun of Y to gain status" or "Person Z lowered my status in that meeting - I've got to be sure to get even with them." I don't think that, in order to have more/closer friends, it is important that I become more popular than someone else. I do occasionally feel embarrassed (e.g. I said something wrong in a meeting) or ashamed (e.g. I forgot about a friend's birthday).
I guess I just don't think any of these as "zero-sum".
Even in the "banged your wife" scenario - does that give you status? I don't think it would among my peer group... Would I become less popular? Would people at work think I was less competent? I don't think the effect would be very large...
Do people actually think like that? To me, it doesn't seem like a good way to approach life from either a personal-happiness perspective or a social-welfare perspective. I don't know, I find the amount of emphasis you're placing on its importance confusing. So, I see three options:
- There is some disconnect between what you and I mean by "status"
- I actually do care immensely about status - I'm just repressing it.
- Some people viscerally care a great deal about status. Others don't.
You can't expect absolute neutrality from people at all times
I don't. I expect people to follow the rules such as
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Be Kind
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Be no more antagonistic than is absolutely necessary for your argument.
-
Be charitable.
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Do not weakman in order to show how bad a group is
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Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be.
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Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
The comment I was responding to violates these. The great grand parent violates these:
Noone needs to face anything, just increasingly automate weapon systems and let the peasants die. If they're not needed and can't use violence to effectively overthrow the system then why would anyone need to pay any attention to them whatsoever?
The forum is replete with obvious violations of the rules. The mods obviously won't mod comments like this, because then they'd be modding like 30% of all the comments here.
But that doesn't mean you should feel discouraged from commenting if you dissent from the consensus view.
Why not? I have better places to discuss topics like this where. I wish this place were better, because then I'd find much more value out of discussing things here, but c'est la vie. [edit: for instance, I found the /r/slatestarcodex threads much more pleasant and insightful]
KnotGodel
10mo ago
typically outnumber homicides with rifles 2-to-1
Per your same link, "total firearm" homicides outnumber "personal weapons" homicides 14-to-1. You also have to consider denominators. How many times more fistfights happen per year relative to gun fights? That is to say, all things considered, gun fights are probably 2-3 orders of magnitude more lethal than fist fights. Let's not minimize this obvious point.
When you say
Someone commits battery and risks committing murder, but because they haven't (yet?) escalated to a higher probability of death I should be upset that their victim does so first?
If your mode of moral reasoning can justify escalating from ~0.1% fatality risk to a 22% fatality risk under this situation, why not a also accept self-defense escalation to guns if the original fatality risk is 0.01%? 0.001%? If 2-3 orders of magnitude don't convince you, I'm not convinced 4-5 orders of magnitude would convince you, at which point I have to wonder if fatality risk escalation is really the model underlying your beliefs as opposed to, say, honor, fairness, etc.
but for discouraging murder via a more effective means of self-defense I'm fine with at least a couple orders of magnitude of "more effective"
But, this is an important sticking point. The only way allowing people to escalate from fists to guns reduces overall murder is if the 2-3 OOM increase in lethality is paired with a 2-3 OOM decrease in fist fights. This seems implausible. So, the only plausible conclusion is that a norm of escalating fist fights to gun fights causes a large increase in dead bodies. To me that is a steep price to pay for honor and fairness.
We are both just quibbling about numbers at this point, right?
I don't think when numbers are OOM that you can fairly describe it a "quibbling".
At what point does "if you don't want to face potentially-lethal force, don't start potentially-lethal force" become a more sensible rule than "just shake off the concussion and calculate probabilities", to you?
Definitely not when the expected loss of life is a decade (e.g. 50 years * 22% = 11) versus ~a week (2-3 OOM less). I don't think one man's honor and sense of fairness at a bar one night are worth an expected value loss of a decade of human life. Do you? Do you honestly think the deterrence effect is anything other than a rounding error next to a decade of human life lost in expectation?
I just pointed out how important the distinction is between fist fights and unprovoked assaults.
Consider my previous comment as applying entirely to unprovoked assaults as well.
I just pointed out how important the distinction is between fist fights and unprovoked assaults. A world with fewer fist fights sounds nice to me, but to each their own.
Please don't imply I prefer a world with more fist fights, when I obviously don't.
A world with fewer unprovoked assaults, though, is one I'd really like to live in, even if that means I never get to blindside someone myself. Wouldn't you agree?
Sure? Though obviously the cost of achieving that world is important to consider.
Wouldn't "I can never safely give someone a black eye out of the blue" be a price so small that it's worth paying for even a slightly reduced risk of being punched and possibly even killed out of the blue?
Sure? Alas, that's not what we're considering.
Everything I'm reading about this case makes it sound like...
Good on you for being open minded. I personally don't really care about the specifics of a random particular case.
You're also ignoring the distinction between different dead bodies. Why?
Because when we're weighing pros and cons and you discussion partner ignores a 2-3 OOM factor, perseverating on a dramatically less important factor is not helpful.
If someone invents the "murder a little child" button, a magic device which can only be used once and has a fifty-fifty chance of working, would you kill them if that was the only way to stop them from pressing it?
To answer your question, I'm unsure if I would kill the button-pushing sociopath, but note that advocating killing him merely means accept a 2x decreased value of his life. Still far and away from the 2-3 OOM factor I've been harping on.
Moreover, in the minds of most people, there's an enormous difference between someone pushing a button with a specific probability of killing someone purely for the thrill of killing someone with a magic button and a drunkard throwing a punch at someone he views as disrespecting him. So even if you believe our button-pushing sociopath's life has 0 value, I don't know why you would infer the punch-throwing drunkard's life has no value. That's an enormous jump so, no, we have not "solved the problem" with your thought experiment - you've simply replaced the hard problem (is it acceptable to shoot drunks who punch people) with an easy problem (is it acceptable to shoot sociopaths who push magic buttons that kill people), all while refusing to actually grapple with the fact that you advocate cutting 10 years of life from someone in expectation because of one dumb drunk decision at a bar.
So, must we still treat attackers equally to victims?
No? You seem to think I am a blind utilitarian calculator. I'm not. But when utilitarianism says the costs outweigh the benefits by 10ish QALYs to ~0 QALYs and the benefit is a sense of fairness/justice in a brawl in a bar some random night... well, that seems like a pretty easy question for me to answer.
It seems silly to discount someone's life by 100x merely because the threw an unprovoked fist some night. It seems silly to think such a policy change would reduce fist fights by 2-3 OOM. It seems silly that fairness in a bar fight weighs more than 10 years of human life.
All else equal, all wealth should be taxed equally (say, flat 1%/y) , not income from wealth. Current tax laws encourage bubbles and poor investing. Just buy a garbage bond or shitcoin and uncle sam will barely touch it, but god helps you if you invest in a company actually making money. And don’t give me the hard-luck grandma story.
Hmm - I haven't heard this take before. Let me do some quick math, courtesy of the Markowitz model. Suppose you have two investment options:
- stocks that returns Norm(A, B)
- risk free interest rate: i
Let e be your risk aversion and let x be the the proportion of your portfolio you are investing in stocks
U = xA + (1-x)i - exxB
dU/dx = A - i - 2exB
x = (A - i) / (2eB)
Capital gains scales returns by k and variance by k^2 (where k = 1 - tax_rate):
x = (kA - ki) / (2ekkB) = (A - i) / (2ekB)
As taxes go up, k shrinks from 1 towards 0, which makes x increase. Therefore, capital gains taxes cause increased risk tolerance.
A wealth tax reduces returns by k:
x = ((A-k) - (i-k)) / (2ekkB) = (A - i) / (2ekB)
This is the same, so a wealth tax doesn't affect risk tolerance.
It’s like a poll tax on wealth, and like a poll tax, it’s very tax efficient.
I don't think this can be true. The chief academic argument against capital gains taxes is that they impose a 100% tax on consumption in the far future, which is maximally distortionary. The same is true of a wealth tax.
The problem with income tax is that it discourages economically beneficial behaviour, like working or good investing.... the state, counter-productively, eggs you on to be a bum and to stack your wealth under the mattress (ignoring inflation). Your lazy bum money should be taxed at least as much as superstar cancer-curing money.
I personally think that if society had no welfare, a flat income tax would be either not distortionary or push people to work more. Note: historically people worked much more and (e.g.) wages being 4x lower because your country is poor is equivalent to a 75% flat tax today.
I have an elegant mathematical model illustrating this result, but I think I've force-fed this forum with enough math already.
KnotGodel
2mo ago
Allow me to paraphrase your complaints from the other side of the aisle:
Trump will tell his supporters that, of course he lost in 2020 - The Establishment is manipulating things behind the scenes - everyone knows that. But Trump literally won in 2016! The media makes much ado about Biden's "dementia"! What idiots those Republicans all are! Isn't it shocking that everyone confirms/affirms this explanation!?
And what about White kid Who Was Rejected By Harvard, because of affirmative action. He literally got into U Chicago! What about all the black kids Harvard rejected!? It truly boggles the minds.
If even Trump explains the world to himself this way, what is a normal Republican supposed to think? A poor white trash family in a trailer park? How can self-exculpatory models of the world be eradicated in people with somewhat credible claims to oppression when they are so popular even among the most privileged members of society?
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.
Where is “p”?
Sorry. I ended up using "x" in the actual math. I've edited the post to be correct
I’m gonna need a template for these equations
You might find the Modern portfolio theory article more useful or even his original paper (scihub). If you want a quick explanation
- We can approximate any reasonable utility function using a second-order Taylor series
- We can approximate investments as normal distributions
- The expected value of a 2nd order polynomial normal random variable, X, equals (up to linear transformation) E[X] - e * Var[X], where e is a parameter determined by the 2nd order polynomial and the normal distribution
- Therefore, we can approximate the problem of "choose an optimal portfolio" as "choose the portfolio that optimize E[X] - e*Var[X]
- Once we've made that leap, we can use the properties of expected value and variance to convert (a) a vector of expected values and (b) a covariance matrix of returns into an optimal portfolio
Obviously, the usual caveat applies: all models are wrong, some are useful.
[ Edit: in case it wasn't clear, I'm saying a wealth tax is better than a capital gains tax in that it doesn't distort risk-taking while a capital gains tax does]
So a 99 % capital gains tax results in everyone investing in stocks?
Yeah. Note: people would probably save less, but what the people are saving would be invested in stocks rather than bonds in this model.
I call bullshit on that. A 100% tax on everything right now is more distortionary.
Sure. I mean that according to ivory-tower theory, even a 1% capital gains tax now is equivalent to a 100% tax on far-future consumption. A 1% tax on labor income or current-consumption doesn't have that pathology.
But we have welfare, and the income tax isn’t flat. You’re very theoretical today.
Right, my main point is that, contrary to textbooks, I don't think poll taxes are actually non-distortionary. I think a poll tax (and its opposite: welfare) is distortionary.
Ignoring the motivating effect of hunger, of course.
What do you mean?
My point is that this method of reasoning is garbage that only seems useful when you are mind killed.
The specifics hardly matter.
there will always people who want to be free, and there will always be people who want to censor and control them.
That is the libertarian dichotomy.
An Effective Altruist would say
there will always be people who want to help others, and there will always people who want to ignore them or merely feel good about themselves
The Christian wold say
there will always be people who believe in Jesus, and there will always be people who reject him for a life of sin and pleasure
The Scientist would say
there will always be people who pursue truth, and there will always be people who cling to dogma
The SJW would say
there will always be people who stand up for the weak, and there will always be people trying to oppress them
etc. etc.
The Culture War is not simply the dichotomy of the free versus the controlling. That is simply the dichotomy people on this forum tend to favor.
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"
Let me make this very concrete for you
- Everyone complains about things holding them back that aren't there fault.
- It is common practice for this to be a social endeavor, and for people to avoid voicing disagreement, because that is considered anti-social, since people playing the game Poor Old Me generally don't want to play the game everyone here is addicted to: Debate Me
- If I complain I'm not X because I'm an A, and you reply that people who are not-A are also not-X, you haven't actually provided any evidence that the causal claim I was making is false.
- Even the most successful people can correctly point to things that held them back.
In other words, if we apply the standard of discourse used by the OP, we can validly whine about anyone's whining. That standard of discourse is, in a word, shit. It only appeals to people who have been mind-killed.
The specifics about Trump absolutely don't matter. I could point to any person or demographic, and there would be things they whine about holding them back. I could make a post exactly like the OPs regardless of whether those factors had any basis in reality.
I realize this forum is mostly a place to vibe/whine.
Sorry for killing the mood /s
Well, except if you're with a group of people bonding by bullying someone, you perspective implies I should start bullying them too...
ETA: though, I do admit, definitionally that taking the selfish perspective does "better serve" you
KnotGodel
4mo ago
Statistical Structure of the Supreme Court
Inspired by earlier discussion on The Motte, I decided to statistically investigate the voting patterns of the Supreme Court.
The obvious place to start is by looking at how frequently each justice's opinions aligned with each other's. We can interpret the percent-of-times-disagreed as a measure of how "far apart" justices are. We can then use a variety of approaches to plot this onto a 2d graph (e.g. using sklearn.manifold.MDS)
I found data from back when Breyer was on the Court rather than Jackson. My preferred model results is this graph and fairly consistent with @Walterodim's characterization:
- Sotomayor as a left outlier
- Kegan (and Breyer) on the left
- Kavenaugh, Roberts, and Barrett towards the center
- Thomas and Alito on the right
Finally, he characterizes Gorsuch as a "Maverick", which is admittedly a little hard to formalize in a 2d projection of a high-dimensional space, and the model just spits him out between Barrett and Thomas.
KnotGodel
4mo ago
Based on this comment, SBF's blog, and his professional achievements it seems pretty clear that Sam is extremely smart. Specifically, he is very good at manipulating formal systems - math, software, games, etc. He is merely smart is once you leave the world of formal systems.
Unfortunately, in a move common common among STEM-nerd, I'm guessing he realized that all non-formal-systems contain subjectivity, which means you can use them to argue anything, which means they're "bullshit". Indeed, much of this forum is built upon a similar syllogism, but with a more explicitly political lens (e.g. the law is so vague that you can prosecute anyone with selective enforcement). None of this is completely wrong and it is often useful in some contexts, however...
I strongly believe that a large part of a STEM-nerd maturing into an healthy adult is learning
- that there are degrees of subjectivity and objectivity
- that whether a system (formal or informal) is useful for navigating the world is a pretty different question than whether it is objective/true
- how to use multiple systems, both formal and informal, simultaneously to navigate the world
Or, to use Robert Kegan’s model of development: to move from Stage 4 to Stage 5.
Like, take Socrates. Is Socrates the greatest philosopher in the history? That question doesn't have an answer. However, there is value in reading Socrates that puts him above a typical philosopher - namely that understanding Socrates makes it much easier for you to understand a myriad of other philosophers. If you're interested in digesting philosophy as a field, that is valuable. If, on the other hand, you're interested in how philosophy applies to doing the greatest good for the fewest dollars - not so much.
Or take Freud. I assume SBF would say Freud was pseudoscientific bullshit. To be fair, (1) I have yet to find value in some of his writing (particularly on sexuality) and (2) Freud was hardly a beacon of science qua science, and yet... Freud
- popularized the idea that much of our cognition is not conscious
- invented "defense mechanisms" as a concept and cataloged an enormous number of them (e.g. the use of intellectualisation to avoid negative emotions)
both of which are not really "provable", but are self-evidently true/useful.
Likewise, Freud popularized the framing of the Id, Ego, and Superego, which, when stripped of its mysticism essentially boils down to:
People's want to fulfill their desires (Id, Pleasure Principle), but these often conflict with moral/social values (Superego). This conflict, in addition to some desires/values being literally impossible (Reality Principle) introduce significant "tension" in that you can't achieve everything you want, so you have to trade off some of one for the other. Moreover, people use various cognitive tricks to help reduce this tension - e.g. rationalizing that they didn't want money anyway, when their desire (to have money) conflicts with reality (they're poor) or their morals (it's wrong to be greedy).
It is literally impossible to prove the above framework is "true". However, a great number of people find the framing useful.
Anyway, I've gotten off track... ¯_(ツ)_/¯
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
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.
I wonder if your wondering is done in good faith 🤔
I think extremely few people (maybe even no one) pursue making LLMs liberally biased for EA reasons.
Since when has a group representing 3% of the population (vegans) taken enough power to implement "hardcore authoritarian policies and restrictions"?
Only for unhealthy minds, I think? Whether freeing slaves "reduced" the position of non-slaves is a question without an objective answer - only psychological interpretations. For instance, many Indians never eat meat and would tell you they don't feel "reduced" by this.
That post is just describing regression to the mean, which every informal group encounters. Nothing unique to EA here.
The same could be asked about any group with any large goal: companies, nonprofits, religious organizations. Nothing unique to EA here.
How do we know it is dishonorable?
won't be the last?
Do you have evidence EAs suffer from "extreme self confidence"?
Again, this isn't unique to EA. Any group with money/power attracts the power hungry. What's your point?
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