MathWizard
Good things are good
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User ID: 164
MathWizard
Good things are good
1yr ago
Whose push? If he's just a puppet letting someone else pull the strings, then isn't that person or group effectively the President? How do you have Democracy and accountability if the literal President is just a figurehead representing unknown people in a political party? Does every Democratic Senator vote to decide what Joe Biden's next position should be? Does Nancy Pelosi call all the shots unilaterally and functionally equivalent to being the president herself except she gets none of the blame or credit if things go badly? Is Hillary Clinton the puppetmaster and electing Joe Biden was politically equivalent to electing her? Is the CEO of CNN actually influencing Joe Biden by implicitly threatening to smear him if he doesn't do what they want? We don't know. And next election cycle, if Joe Biden steps down and another puppet steps up you might have the exact same person/people pulling their strings, bypassing term limits, and pretending to be starting fresh with a new reputation, forgetting all the mistakes they made in the past.
I very much want a President who has policies and agendas, declares what they are openly, honestly, and publicly, and then sticks to them as much as reasonably possible. Because then we the people can decide which collections of policies and agendas we actually agree with and vote for whichever President has the best. Because we the people are supposed to be in charge, not shady politicians making secret deals behind the scenes and avoiding responsibility.
MathWizard
Good things are good
2yr ago
My own addendum
3.5: How does your answer change based on the fact that the vigilantism happened before the men were tried?
Having not seen the movie and just going on your description, I think I would be somewhat harsh on the father because he didn't even give the justice system a chance. If the men had been tried, found not guilty or gotten away with a slap on the wrist, and then the father killed them, I'd be inclined to give a similar punishment of ~10 years. Similarly if the police had failed to arrest them in the first place. I'd think that the father did the right thing morally in killing them, but that the law needs to be enforced and have consequences, and he can do his time in exchange for having his morally justified revenge.
But he didn't even let them get to trial. And, given that the all white and kind of racist jury did in fact find him not guilty, this implies that they would have been even more likely to find the original criminals guilty if he had let them (technically it would probably be a different jury, but in the same area statistically it would have the same representation).
I think vigilantism after the justice system has already failed you is much more defensible than vigilantism in anticipation of the justice system failing, unless there is a clear and repeated pattern such that you reliably know it will fail, which a single prior case does not establish. The father should get a fairly harsh sentence. Still less than an unprovoked double homicide would warrant, but quite a bit more than I would think fair for a vigilante attack when the perpetrators were not literally in police custody.
MathWizard
Good things are good
2yr ago
Rather than saying they don't exist, it would be more accurate and productive to say that they have a mental illness. Like with people with anorexia. It exists, it can cause suffering, it's complicated and hard to solve rather than just "made up" in a way that a five year old pretending to be a cowboy is. But it exists within the realm of psychology, and therefore effective treatments will also be within the realm of psychology: therapy and medications. And it is socially irresponsible to enable the behavior and reinforce the illness, even though sympathy may be appropriate as it is for most mental illnesses.
MathWizard
Good things are good
1yr ago
Unless colleges themselves start dropping Gen Ed requirements (which they should), AP courses of nonsense subjects are incredibly useful because they let you bypass them in college. I took AP Psychology and AP Government in highschool, they were mostly pointless, I passed the exam, and then when I went to college I had two fewer useless class eating my time and money so I could learn math and physics. (I also took AP classes for some of those too, but that just let me fastforward to more advanced ones in my major)
This seems absolutely terrible, comparable to affirmative action in nature. Artificially increasing demand for a thing lowers the standards it has to reach in order for the market to accept it. This can't have a positive impact on the amount of genuinely quality Canadian content, because content they make that is comparable to non-Canadian content is/was able to compete in a fair playing field without regulations demanding it be spread. So this only impacts low quality content that wasn't previously good enough but now is accepted anyway to meet quotas. If you want people to consume your product, make a good product that people genuinely want to consume out of their own free will, don't force it on them. Now the average piece of Canadian content people encounter will have a lower quality than it did before, which actually reinforces stereotypes and breeds annoyance and resentment.
I can only see this going poorly.
MathWizard
Good things are good
2yr ago
Are there any good centrist or right-wing think tanks in the U.S. that are respectable, principled, and might have interest in hiring a mathematical modeler that I could apply for jobs at?
For context, I have a PhD in math, I specialize in game theory and mathematical modeling. I also have some experience with disease modeling, though not Covid specifically. I am currently nearing the end of a postdoc research position at a University, and a few published papers and several drafts I'm still working on. Over time I've felt less comfortable in academia as everything shifts less and all diversity stuff keeps getting worse. It hasn't affected me directly much (though you can never tell when you don't hear back from a job application whether being a straight white male was the cause or not), but it's kind of uncomfortable, and some topics that I'm interested in I'm afraid to actually go into because the papers might be rendered unpublishable. And just in general I feel the papers I publish don't actually matter all that much, and I suspect something more applied like this might feel more meaningful.
I'm still applying for some jobs at universities, but also industry jobs and am wondering if maybe a right wing think tank would be a good opportunity. Given the left's capture of the Universities, this maybe implies there's a shortage of right-wing academics and I'd have a better shot of getting in? But that's probably less true in math. And I definitely don't want to work for some propaganda machine that just hacks studies together to conclude whatever they already believe is true. I think that the left sometimes has legitimate points that are worth considering, and ideally would like to be able to make good scientific papers and mathematical models that give insight to people on both the left and right, and can potentially make the right stronger and smarter.
Bonus points for places that allow working remotely or are near the East Coast so I don't have to move very far, but at this point I'll take what I can get.
MathWizard
Good things are good
2yr ago
I'd welcome any thoughts people might have on what that might be.
Something along the lines of Trump's "Make America Great Again" but more concrete and effective.
1: Small businesses. Make it way easier to start and run a small business. Slash regulations, maybe taxes too. Take like half the forms and policies and regulations that businesses have to do and either remove them or make them only apply to businesses over a certain size. Make harsher anti-monopoly anti-corruption laws or just enforce existing ones more harshly on large businesses. The American dream isn't that one day you might be a wageslave to a megacorp, it's that you can make it big by your own hard work. Freedom and perseverance and all that. This also will help the balance of power between labor and corporations, more small businesses means more competition for megacorps trying to convince employees to work for them, and a more credible threat that an underpaid employee can just quit as start their own business.
2: Infrastructure. Build fancy buildings and cities and parks and bridges and highways. A modern first world train system would be nice. Cut the cost disease, be less wasteful, and do great things. Create employment for working class people who build stuff, and probably bring some manufacturing jobs back.
Elon Musk seems remarkably well-suited towards being a figurehead or inspiration or actually in charge of parts of the above points. He's good at taking things that everyone has been doing poorly, like space travel or electric cars or internet, things which everyone knows could be better but for some reason aren't, and actually doing it better. And, importantly, these can be part of inspiring utopian visions about the future, not the past. The internet allows for new decentralized employment like Uber or Airbnb, maybe self-employed tradesmen could use similar things to be plumbers or electricians or something, and maybe weird crypto stuff could allow workers and customers to coordinate without some large corporation pulling the strings and leeching the profits. And fancy new technology makes building fancy new infrastructure possible.
3: Family/Community. This one is largely a return to the past, but part of the point of the right is that you don't destroy things just because they're old, you keep the good stuff. The leftist future is one in which you are either an individual who can do whatever you want and cut people's throats to get ahead, or you are a member of a collective group determined by your sex/race/orientation determined by your birth. The rightist future is one in which family and neighbors are bond together by shared traditions, cultures, and mutual duties to each other. You don't just pack up and move to another city abandoning your friends and family every four years even if it would maximize your career trajectory. You are loyal and act with honor even when it goes against your self-interest, because you actually care about the people around you, and they care about you. Also, I think there is potential for this to go in future directions, as telecommunications, and the easier work-from-home meta caused by Covid allows for increased career opportunities for people who stay in their small hometowns with their extended families.
Republicans are too busy playing defense against the Democrats to build such a utopian vision, and too afraid of being cancelled to shrug off accusations of "-isms" and stick to their own vision of moral goodness. And most of the voters are too uneducated and unambitious to demand such a utopian vision, or to demand honor and loyalty from their own politicians. And the Democrats have been crying wolf against Republicans for so long that all such accusations are now ignored by Republican voters, allowing some actual wolves to mingle among them unnoticed. It's a mess, and I'm almost as upset at the Republicans as I am at the Democrats for ruining the country. But at least theoretically a utopian right wing vision of the future is possible and would be inspiring to people to vote for and genuinely good if accomplished.
MathWizard
Good things are good
22d ago
Framing things in terms of "pro-single-mother" vs "anti-single-mother" makes about as much sense as being "pro-orphan" or "anti-orphan". You can believe that a situation is bad to be in and therefore want to help people who happen to be in that situation AND try to prevent people from falling into that situation AND not Goodhart the numbers by killing them.
DO: Help kids with no parents with money and support structures (without actively incentivizing the status)
DO: Try to prevent people from becoming orphans.
DON'T: Reduce the number of orphans by killing them
Really, a child of a single parent is just a half-orphan. Therefore
DO: Help single parent families with money and support structures (without actively incentivizing the status)
DO: Try to prevent people from becoming single-parents.
DON'T: Reduce the number of single-parents by killing them (or the children)
All of this follows trivially from the quality of life the child can expect, on average, in each state:
Full family > Single Parent Family > Orphan > Death
Whether you want more or fewer single parent families then depends on which direction you're coming from. Trying to pin people down into "pro" or "anti" single parents only makes sense if these were terminal ends rather than proxies for quality of life.
MathWizard
Good things are good
6mo ago
I don't think I mind the mythologizing all that much. There were a lot of brave people who helped slaves before and during the civil war, they deserve credit. As long as it's directionally true (Harriet Tubman did actually help slaves), I don't mind her being a stand-in for the credit that they deserve.
What I do object to is attempts to elevate her beyond that, especially in the role of a political leader, which she was not. Andrew Jackson was the President of the United States. He's on our money because we put Presidents on money (And Benjamin Franklin, because he was important in founding the nation). All of the leaders in Civ games are Presidents, Kings, Chiefs, etc: actual historical rulers, because you as the player are making the decisions controlling your nation. Harriet Tubman was not. Every single thing she said could be true and she still wouldn't belong on money or in Civ because, despite being a good person, she wasn't actually a political leader. It's a category error.
MathWizard
Good things are good
9mo ago
I tentatively expect this to shift things towards Trump.
There's an old article on SSC: https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/04/a-thrivesurvive-theory-of-the-political-spectrum/
about how right wing politics are optimized towards surviving, ie in an apocalypse, and left wing politics are optimized for thriving when there are plenty of resources. When things are tough you make tough decisions and sacrifices in order to survive, and make stable family units that can replace the people who inevitably die. Which right wing politics are optimized for. When things are great and there's plenty to go around then you can do whatever you want and be inefficient but free and happy, and anyone trying to restrict you is doing it for selfish reasons, so you should ignore them, which left wing politics are optimized for.
Maslow's Hierarchy of needs is often depicted as a pyramid, but perhaps it would be more appropriate to tip it sideways, so the lower baser needs are on the right while the higher needs are on the left, as those are their strengths.
When things are tough, people want a tough leader who does what needs to be done, who will ensure their basic necessities, security, and establish confidence and project strength. Regardless of whether Trump is actually more effective at this than Harris, he certainly appears that way superficially. I expect more swing votes to shift towards Trump compared to the counterfactual scenario where these floods did not happen, though I have no idea how strong of an effect this will be, so not sure if it will matter or even be statistically significant.
MathWizard
Good things are good
1yr ago
It reads like a joke that someone forgot the punchline to and butchered the delivery. Would have been much better if they had figured out how to get it in the correct order.
MathWizard
Good things are good
1yr ago
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Gun rights are enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, that makes them a Federal issue. Now, perhaps the exact wording and definition of what regulations constitute "infringement" or not are up for debate, but that is a debate about the meaning of the constitution itself. Once we've defined what is and is not infringement, no State has the right to make laws stricter than that. It's out of their jurisdiction. This is not a pure 100% Democracy, the electorate and anyone they elect do not have the legal authority to infringe the right to bear arms, even within the borders of their state, because the constitution does not give them that right.
Again, it's open for debate what does and does not count as infringement, but the legitimacy of getting involved in other state's business is present on this issue, and not other more progressive issues, because it's directly and clearly established in the Constitution.
MathWizard
Good things are good
1yr ago
I think this requires noblesse oblige from the people higher up, which mostly only happens if there is accountability for people at the top via skin in the game. If you are a feudal lord with lands that your famils has held for generations and peasants under you whose families have worked for your for generations, you are incentivized to take care of them because their thriving is your thriving. If you mistreat them too terribly they will rebel and chop your head off. If you mismanage the lands you will go bankrupt and be reduced to poverty. If you do a good job you will be wealthy and loved.
If you are the patriarch of a family and you mistreat your wife and/or children they will hate you and leave.
If you are a modern high level bureaucrat or government official in charge of millions/billions of dollars of someone else's money and mismanagement is rewarded with a transfer or a golden parachute, there's none of this. There's no incentive to behave responsibly to those below you, and there's no incentive for people trying to climb their way up to do so gracefully when a momentary clawhold can be cemented with the powers obtained along the way.
If SBF, or the bankers who caused the housing crisis, or the politicians who ruined the economy during Covid faced the ruin of their families into longterm poverty, or beheading by angry mobs, those issues probably wouldn't have happened in the first place because they would have been more careful. If every politician who voted for war was required to lead on the front lines, we'd have a lot fewer wars. But because many (most?) hierarchies allow people high to foist the consequences of their decisions onto people lower down, we typically don't get the nice scale of risk/reward that you envision here, though it sometimes does work like that.
MathWizard
Good things are good
2yr ago
but it's kinda irrelevant compared to the bit where it's just not going to happen
And sometimes people do get Made Examples
I find this incredibly relevant. Having a gigantic pile of insane laws that survive only because they're selectively enforced is a corrupt tyrant's wet dream. If everyone regularly commits felonies without realizing it, then everyone is at the mercy of the police and DA who can legally enforce these laws on whomever they dislike for any reason. It does matter, even if 99.9% never become the target of this selective enforcement, because the 0.1% who do will not be targeted because of their unique wrongdoing but because the powers that be chose to single them out, which can lead to a lot of bad stuff above and beyond jail time. Sure, you as a regular citizen won't be affected, as long as you keep your head down and never make someone in power dislike you. That incentive is itself the problem.
MathWizard
Good things are good
2yr ago
Historical examples can be misleading for making predictions.
You know what's even more misleading for making predictions? A complete absence of historical examples. You're extrapolating way too much from "this thing is flawed" to "this thing is useless" without comparing it to the alternative. People are already really bad at critical thinking about events and politics, we don't need less we need more. Now, you can make a really good argument that history classes should be improved to deliver more value per time rather than making them longer (which I would be inclined to agree with). But the idea that they have no value to give is absurd.
MathWizard
Good things are good
8mo ago
I am absolutely not blue tribe, and never have been, this does not describe me. I grew up with Christian Republican parents, got a hunting license at 12 years old, I hate cities, am highly skeptical of big government and redistributive policies, and think the majority of social problems are best solved by self control and personal responsibility, or failing that, ruthless law enforcement. My grandparents on both sides are rednecks and they are wonderful and kind people who I adore. But I personally would rather spend my day on my computer than outdoors on a pickup truck, and I think the Republicans are equally braindead as the Democrats, just less trigger-happy about their stupid plans. I suppose you could define me as "a particular disaffected part of the red tribe", but then you have to explain why I have more in common with the other blue-grey people than I do with the pure red people. I think lots of the right-leaning Mottizens have similar cultural leanings. Some of them are disaffected blue tribe, but others came from Red. But most of us don't fit in nicely with either.
Even if you don't think "gray tribe" is the best way to describe it, there's clearly some real thing that the term is pointing to, something that bridges the gap between Red and Blue.
MathWizard
Good things are good
1yr ago
The best argument I've heard in favor of unions is that the equivalent bargaining power of "a company" isn't "an employee" it's "all the employees".
Suppose we remove the distinction of capital versus labor, and suppose that we have two groups of people with disproportionate level of bottleneck in a production process. That is, if we have X people from the first group, and Y people from the second group, then the level of production is something like
f(X,Y) = A sqrt(X)P(Y)
where A is some constant, and P is 0 if Y is 0 and 1 if Y >= 1
That is, you only need one Y (the employer), but can have as many X as you want, but the more X you have in the same job the more diminishing returns you get. For each production process people can gather together and organize and form mutually consensual agreements to find some equilibrium level of X that makes this efficient. BUT, Y has disproportionate bargaining power here. If any individual X threatens to quit, their quitting drops the profits of the process by some small amount. But less than their average. The other X essentially pick up the slack, and the production keeps on going. But X is now unemployed and has 0 income, which is catastrophically awful and wasteful, as all of their potential labor is essentially being wasted unused. X quitting hurts themselves more than it hurts Y. But if Y threatens to quit then everything stops and everyone is at 0, so it's a credible threat.
But if all of the X form a union and threaten to quit/strike together, then again production stops entirely, just as if Y threatened to quit. So now they have equal bargaining power.
I'm pretty sure whoever I read this sort of argument from explained it way better than I just did, but I don't remember who or where (it might have been on the motte, so if whoever it was recognizes this argument as their own and can find the post, feel free to repost it and claim credit).
MathWizard
Good things are good
2yr ago
Holy crap. That @ControlsFreak post on personalized pricing just blew my mind. I hadn't seen it when it was first posted, but I'm very glad that I did because it just changed my perspective on the whole financial assistance thing.
MathWizard
Good things are good
2yr ago
I feel like something like there's some component of the opposite of this though. That is, perhaps socially adept people have evolved to shame awkward men into hiding because if they agree to hide then there are fewer men in the dating pool and the remaining men have a lower male to female density and thus more market value. This only works with awkward and weak men as targets because they are unlikely to retaliate, and are more likely to drop out instead of saying "fuck you" and continuing to ask girls out.
We might consider this a form of artificial selection: humans are nudging the fitness landscape in a way that makes being shy and kind less adaptive than it already was, because they are less likely to find a mate, while more aggressive behavior (shamers, and people who ignore negative feedback) becomes more adaptive.
If this is the case, then the correct response is actually the opposite: you should ignore them and in fact become more proactive about pursuing women because you and people like you are being suppressed by a psy-op from a different phenotype of males, which primarily functions by deceiving you and wins if and only if you believe it.
MathWizard
Good things are good
2yr ago
The solution is to not lower the status of people with lower IQ. It is possible, and quite likely, that we literally live in a world where black people, on average, have lower IQ than white people. If true, this means that, in reality, one of the following must be true: people with lower IQ have the same moral value as people with higher IQ, or black people have less moral value than white people.
No amount of obfuscation, linguistic gymnastics, or averting ones gaze can avoid this dilemma. You have to pick one of the two (technically there's a third option where unintelligent people have more value than intelligent people, but that's pretty niche). An awful lot of people firmly believe that people with low IQ are lesser, which forces them to either accept reality and become racists, or deny reality to avoid the logical conclusion of their beliefs. I would argue that the latter is just closeted racism because they believe unintelligent people are lesser, so all of the unintelligent black people who exist in reality are people they implicitly attribute as being lesser. The bullet to bite is that unintelligent people are not automatically bad people, and you're not better than them just because you're smarter than them. Once you do this, the entire structure of "racist truths" disintegrates, because you're not automatically assigning moral value or hatred to people just because of the way they were born.
The truth cannot be racist, because the truth does not assign moral value. People do that.
MathWizard
Good things are good
2yr ago
I think there are two main forces contributing to this:
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Signalling being "hard to fake" is not just about the physical/financial difficulty of sending the signal, but also the knowledge of how to send it, or that the signal even exists in the first place. You have to know who the fashionable celebrities are and pay attention to them, and avoid paying attention to the wrong celebrities (doing so signals you have good judgement, or more likely know the right people who inform you about who is cool and who isn't). You have to keep up to date with new information and new products as the fashions shift, and not be stuck with yesterdays fashion (doing so signals you still know the right people and aren't getting your information second hand as fashion slowly propagates). And most importantly, you have to actually care enough to spend your time and money for pure signalling, indicating that you are committed and loyal to this signal and not just sending it out frivolously. Anyone with a few hundred bucks can buy an iphone, but only someone who actually cares about being cool will willingly sacrifice the superior quality/price ratio of android devices for an overpriced apple product just to look cool. It's a costly signal not just in money but in time, knowledge, and dignity. (The last two sentences are exaggerated for comedic effect, but hopefully you get the point)
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Signals are more diverse than a one dimensional quality slider that you want to maximize. A lot of signals are about belonging to a particular group. You might wear lots of dark clothing and makeup to signal that you're a goth, or conspicuously listen to Taylor Swift music to signal you're a fan and belong to groups which tend to like her, or go to church every Sunday to signal you're a good Christian, or wear giant ear gauges to signal... I'm not even sure what those signal, probably nonconformity and a rejection of normal beauty standards. And while people in each group will see these as good qualities, people outside the groups may consider them weakly positive, neutral, or even negative signals if they dislike that group. You can't send signals favorable to every group simultaneously, so choosing one demonstrates some level of solidarity, loyalty, camaraderie with those people in particular.
Personally, I think Apple products are decent-ish but overpriced relative to their quality (or equivalently, low quality relative to their price), and have unfriendly business practices such as making all their stuff incompatible with other brands when it would be trivial to have otherwise, especially when they do petty things like change the shape of their usb cables so they won't plug in to non-Apple devices (and normal usb cables won't plug in to Apple devices). As such, I consider ownership of Apple devices to signal some combination of uninformedness, susceptibility to advertisements, and hive-minded prioritization of signalling over substance. A person who buys things because they're cool instead of because they're useful. So I treat it as a (weak) negative signal and respect people with Apple devices slightly less. But also I'm a weird nerd and I am neither cool nor popular, so people who send those signals are in fact successful in signalling that I am not one of them, they are part of a different group, and that's probably the signal they want to send. If everyone wanted to send the same signal then money would be the only hurdle, and you're correct that it's not all that much money so not a strong signal. But by choosing an arbitrary product that's worse in some aspects you select for people who care about the signal strongly enough to make arbitrary choices in exchange for status with the group, and exclude people who just choose the best product and don't know or care about the group. And that becomes part of the signal and its cost.
MathWizard
Good things are good
2yr ago
I wonder if a lot of bullshit jobs are acting as a sort of... I'm not even sure what word to use here... emotional/comfort embezzlement? A principal agent problem in which Middle managers, or even upper management and CEOs with plenty of slack that aren't worried about shareholders, hire or keep around people who make their work lives slightly more pleasant because that maximizes their own utility, not the company's. If a middle manager has a choice between a friendly face who hangs out around the office, chats with them, brings donuts to work, and is generally friendly, or a stoic competent worker drone who gets stuff done, the optimal choice for the business is the worker drone, but the rationally selfish choice for the manager is going to depend on how much slack they have and how important it is for them to maximize productivity. If the choice is between the friendly face in a bullshit job or removing the job and saving the company $50k, the rationally selfish choice is probably to the keep the friendly face around. Having an extra friend around at the office isn't worth $50k, and the manager wouldn't spend that out of their own pocket. But if it's just a number of a spreadsheet? That's worth paying. If the manager could take $50k of the company's money at put it into their own pocket, and get away with it, they would. But they can't. But spending $50k of the company's money to improve their lives and make their job slightly easier at an equivalent of $5k? If they can get away with it then it's worth it, because the cost is measured in company-utility and the benefit is in personal-utility.
Any time you give someone control over someone else's money, inefficiencies are bound to happen in one way or another. It's just a question of to what degree.
MathWizard
Good things are good
1yr ago
even though you've never believed in the validity of the accusation at all?
This is an incredibly rare scenario that almost never sees play anywhere, especially in the examples you give. Nobody in mainstream politics or culture thinks that being a racist or a pedophile is okay and therefore an invalid accusation that can simply be ignored. Dismissals are always founded on assumptions that the accusation is so obviously false that they don't even require rebuttals, that opponents are wolf-criers with no credibility, not that the accusations are true but ignorable because the they aren't bad.
Therefore, it is entirely consistent and not at all hypocritical to believe that opponents are unreliable wolf-criers who shouldn't be taken seriously when they make accusations, but then if you find actual evidence of them misbehaving to accuse them of the same crime, if you have actual evidence. Which of course, each side believes about themselves and not their opponents.
MathWizard
Good things are good
2yr ago
I think it's important to still care about convincing the other side, because it's useful. We live in a democracy, therefore more public support for our side increases our chances of successfully implementing it. If we lived in a dictatorship with you or I in charge and could just ban it immediately, then authoritarian suppression would be the way to go to guarantee it stops as soon as possible.
If, in the current environment, everyone on the right gives up on persuasion and just decries their opponents as inhuman monsters then all of the areas controlled by the right will ban it, all of the areas controlled by the left will not, and everyone in the center will see one side pretending to be kind and compassionate while we superficially look like authoritarian bigots despite being the ones actually helping people.
In general, the right has a huge optics problem. Or rather, the left has an optics advantage because the majority of their positions are chosen based on optimizing for feelgoods and superficial appearances, which makes them look better than they are in practice. The only way the right (and moderates, and logical people who don't optimize exclusively for optics) can stand a chance is by being logical, persuasive, and thorough enough that the superficial appearances are stripped away and the actual superior policies are revealed to the people around.
Gender affirming care for minors is an evil policy with horrible results. Most people who support it from a distance aren't evil people, they're naive people who haven't actually looked into the details and have just bought into the propaganda that all anti-trans arguments are founded on bigotry and hatred. And you don't change their minds by acting the same way someone who irrationally hated trans people would act, if you try then they'll stop looking further as soon as you confirm their prior beliefs. You change their minds by being kind, compassionate, logical, explaining this in detail, and then banning child mutilation because it's the kind, compassionate, and logical thing to do.
Not sure if this belongs here or in SQS, but it could either be a small question I don't understand or a discussion depending on whether or not people disagree about the answer.
Why did support for Ukraine split along the left/right the way it did (at least in the U.S.), when typically one would expect it to go the other way. That is, the right is usually more pro-military, pro-military intervention, and patriotic defending of one's homeland. Even though the right tends to be more focused on domestic issues and oppose foreign aid, military support tends to be the exeption. Although there was bipartisan support of the Iraq war (at least in the aftermath of 9/11) the Republicans were more strongly in favor of it and stayed in favor of it for longer. If Russia had threatened to invade the U.S. the Republicans would have been not only gung-ho about repelling them but also about retaliating and obliterating them in revenge so that none would dare try ever again. So you would think they would sympathize with Ukrainians as similarly patriotic defenders of their home turf, while the left would be all peace and let's try to get along and diplomatically convince the invaders to stop without violence, or something like that.
But that's not what happened. Why?
Is it just because the left has been harping on about Putin for years so hopped on the anti-Russia train too quickly and the right felt compelled to instinctively oppose them? If China had invaded Ukraine (for some mysterious reason) would the right be pro-Ukraine and the left opposing intervention because they don't want to piss off China (and accusing Ukraine of being nazis as an excuse)? That is, is there something specific to Ukraine/Russia that caused this divide here specifically, or am I misunderstanding the position of each side regarding military intervention in general (or has it changed in the past few decades and my beliefs used to be accurate but no longer are)?
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