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15d ago
“ I'm not gonna defend runaway global warming because I don't believe in it”
- Besides from that Mrs. Lincoln how was the play?
Which is why I said initially (1) and (2) don’t really matter but (3) which the model. How the system interacts with itself is all that matters.
That being said for decades it seemed like the real goal of climate activists was drawing in communists/degrowthwers as an angle to attack western civilization. The actual climate models and whether we should be concerned I believe is past human IQ to figure out. So the entire debate was a capitalist-communists fight played out in climate science indirectly that no one understood.
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15d ago
Yes linear is silly. A lot of it depends on the model which we are not good at. I think some had like Russia permafrost melting and releasing a lot of carbon buried under it which would accelerate heating. I have no idea if that is true. But you could have a model where some natural thing starts happening when temperatures rise which cancels out more carbon.
So the model which is (3) is the dominating part of the equation and without a doubt the weakest part of the science.
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16d ago
(1) and (2) does imply (3) but it’s not always true. Natural systems can have mean reverting systems (or breakout) systems. The amount of food you eat does not strictly translate to getting fatter because most people’s metabolism increases when they eat more so there is a naturally mean reversion. Especially since the AGW story was sold on runaway temperature rises and not something that would have system in place that could cancel out a rising temperature.
You actually do need a nearly flawless model of the earths system to make prediction on more CO2 leading to runaway temperature growth and I have not see evidence that we have really good models on the earth.
I am just point out that (1) and (2) does not mean problematic climate change. That actually takes far more complicated science.
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16d ago
There was a third way to dispute greenhouse gases - “the planet would heat up”.
If you if you believe (1) greenhouse gases exists (2) we are pumping a lot of them….it does not guarantee (3) in a complex system. Or more importantly that (3) will be significant versus other modifications like population moving slightly north etc. Or taking other steps that mitigate problems.
The weakest part of the global warming argument was always the create a climate model that is accurate while knowing (1) and (2) are correct. We are simply not good at modeling those things. One thing that has some similarities is the human digestion system and we’ve never been able to model that correctly or entirely explain why humans are getting fatter. And throughout my life on this earth I’ve seen incredible changes on “this is the healthy food you should eat”. The current thing seems to be that I should only eat protein perhaps cooked in beef lard. Sometime in the not so distant past you were suppose to avoid eating red meat.
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16d ago
Agreed. The first wording could be taken as rich kids are bad at sports. But it’s more like rich kids just invent new games when their not in the 1% good enough to play the big games.
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16d ago
I think my question is more like could they put together a team of 18-22 year old olds that could compete with the University of Michigan? If they did like an Apollo program level push of American football?
Obviously they could field a full team, but could they approach a level that is competitive with the top leagues?
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16d ago
If they aren’t good at playing sports I don’t believe it’s because upper class kids are worse at playing sports than lower class kids. But you have a lot more lower class kids so even if the lower class on average produces half as many great athletes per capita their share numbers mean they will dominate.
I think it’s likely true that on average upper class kids are taller than lower class kids and intellect does matter more than people like to admit in sports so upper class kids should be producing at a higher % athletes.
But true elite athletes are still a small % of elites that you would still want to create new games you can be the best at.
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16d ago
I think what really makes American Football expensive is a need to have multiple development platforms for training specialized position groups. You need to be rich, big population, and potentially even diverse. American Samoa and Hawaii can produce some interesting players likely due to some genetics that are good for American football but could they produce a full team. I’m not sure they could produce a higher end QB or kicker which would leave flaws on their roster.
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16d ago
I think arguably Europe is too poor to compete in football. And it’s not just a pure GDP. You probably do need an entire region dominated by the sport let’s call it 50 million people minimally to start to have filters big enough to have professional leagues (college football is probably fair to call professional). To play top level football you may need to have integrated black populations for for wide receiver, cb, and rb positions. It’s the one area where diversity is our strength makes some sense.
And then you need the more direct wealth of being able to pay for 20 coaches per side since you need a lot of coaches because there are 4 types of players (throwers, fast guys, big guys, kickers) plus guys who are mixtures. Sporting equipment is expensive for the game. You likely need emergency medicine to a greater extent.
The counter on why some countries play certain sports is basically a network effect argument. It’s more fun to play games that a lot of other people play so nations tend to keep playing the same games even if its sub-optimal.
The American mind wants to think that it’s our black athletes that would take over soccer because of superior fast twitch muscles, but Kickers and punters are like 98% white and Internationally soccers best players are at a minimum half white.
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17d ago
How did Cuba have the potential of Mexico? The latter has had a large amount of industrialization and drug money. Did Cuba have something ability to more than a tourist economy or basically Florida? I also would assume some of their main cash crops that kept them at 1/3 US income pre-Revolution would be less true going forward.
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17d ago
In fairness too Spain did not shoot well. They had a lot of shots but I didn’t record Martinez making a great save. It felt like all the shots were right at him. But in general what’s the conversion rate from shot to goal - 15%? Which is an 11% chance the game draws. Maybe that’s too high?
Hockey and baseball have a similar issue and they deal with it by playing 7 game series.
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17d ago
I get your sarcasm but in sports there is a line between matchup decided between “random number generator” and “better team wins”. The ideal game has a balance between the two. Soccer I think is probably a little closer to “random number generator” chooses winner. I feel like Spain absolutely dominated that game and it was almost a tie. That’s not a good outcome.
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17d ago
I broadly agree that elite level basketball is boring to watch and stupid because solving for the game at that level is too heavily controlled by height.
I would have to disagree that shooting basketballs lacks usefulness outside of basketball. It’s hand-eye coordination which seems important for a lot of things in life. Perhaps it’s over optimized in some ways for shooting but in general sports that promote hand eye coordination seem to be good.
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17d ago
I think it would fair to say that other countries don’t play American Football because they can’t afford to so I guess that could be considered as them being inferior.
Soccer is a solid middle income country game. It’s why Argentina can be very good. France had the most players in the World Cup and it’s largely because Africa appears to be too poor to train their players domestically.
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17d ago
(3) is why I think NFL is the game of games. Sports are basically practicing war. Football is most like modern combined warfare where completely different weapons and systems need to work together to accomplish a goal and no one system can be as powerful as combining different systems working together.
Football has a lot of specialization that can fit the elites of different body types.
A country in war would not be good at war if they were really good at making tanks but didn’t know how to make a plane. Similar a country really good at producing fast gazelle running people but bad at producing big strong guys would lose to a country that can produce gazelles and strong guys.
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17d ago
Range weapons. The ability to control a projectile and maximize its speed to kill your enemy.
The purpose of sports is to practice war.
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17d ago
I don’t believe the market has passed its verdict. There is a first mover advantage in sports and soccer spread first so a lot of its popularity is because people grew up with soccer.
But part of my argument for soccer being inferior would still fit in under your market test. Other countries are in fact poorer than America and soccer is cheaper to play and be internationally competitive than Americas leading sports. You can reasonably say soccer is more popular elsewhere because they are poorer.
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17d ago
I think I’ve seen three argument for why it’s inferior.
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The better team should win the game more consistently. I saw some data today that soccer has the lowest % chance of favored team winning the game. Upsets do make sports more enjoyable but in soccer the outcome is too heavily on random luck versus ability. You also see this with like Cape Verde being able to draw powerhouse teams which shouldn’t happen in a better game.
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The game doesn’t utilize the human upper body. A good game some how incorporates an athletes upper body. It’s literally half the human body.
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All sports some how mimic war. Soccer has the least application to war of any sport. We don’t have any weapons that involve kicking stuff. This is sort of similar to not using the upper body. But in war we throw stones, spears, arrows, etc which most other sports mimic in some way. War had a lot of hand to hand combat.
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17d ago
Any small question can usually be merged into a larger more culture war question and in this case it’s legally allowing segregation…..is good?
My guess is old people doesn’t cut racial lines at all and every race has old people. A Catholic HOA would essentially be excluding blacks. There is an Islamic group I believe attempting this is Texas but then Trump heard about it and shut it down. In America Islamic enclaves are definitely not popular and even a Catholic enclave feels a little un-American.
I was watching a video on Twitter of a Muslim complaining that the Halal section was tiny compared to the rest of the meat section. Cultural goods in a community are rivals. There is only so much shelf space and built environment. If you want to live in your culture then you kind of do need segregation and exclude other cultures from the built environment.
Segregation reinvented thru first principles.
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17d ago
You may have noticed we had a soccer tournament that ended yesterday. So a lot of people on the internet - myself included - have been thinking about soccer versus American Sports.
So it’s not bait. It’s just me thinking on the subject. And it’s basically that soccer is in fact an inferior sport but it’s weaknesses are also why you can have an international tournament.
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17d ago
We should probably allow more forms of HOA segregation and not less. Keeping a community 55+ means you get to live around people who are all likewise retired who can come over and play at 1 pm on a Tuesday. It means the community can focus on building infrastructure that is specifically beneficial to your age group. The pickleball court doesn’t have any young people dominating games. When you were in college would you want a 40 year old guy who works for Deloitte living in your dorm? No.
Should we have Catholic only neighborhoods? Cultural goods can be rivalrous. If a neighborhood is only Catholic then you can build your Church a 5 min walk from everyone’s house. The local restaurants can have very good fried fish because their neighborhood is loaded with people who eat only fish on Fridays.
From first principles segregation can have a lot of beneficial effects. If Chicago could ban black people from a specific neighborhood then the public school in that neighborhood would become very good and no one would feel pressure to pay for private schools. And then no risks of gun violence.
So yes I am a big believer that people should have a right to associate with whoever they want to. And this includes entering contracts to exclude outsiders.
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17d ago
A soccer thought. I think it’s fair to say soccer is an inferior sport and us Americans are correct to not play it. However since it’s an inferior sports that’s also why you can have a World Cup.
Tiny nations could not put up a fight in America’s sports even if they played them at the same rate. You need to be a rich country to compete in American sports. For American football it’s probably only America that is richest enough to play it. It requires a huge amount of resources and technology to play at the highest levels. Even if the European powers played American football at the same rates I have my doubts they could create a team that’s competitive with a NFL team and we have 30 of them.
Baseball is showing some ability to create a few competitive national teams but baseball can’t be played internationally because of how much we’ve perfected pitching to the point that a human arm has limits on how many pitches it can throw a year. Elite arms can handle about 150 innings per year so there is basically no ability to use them for an offseason tournament.
And since Soccer is a low event sports it means that inferior teams can actually pull out ties or wins against power house teams with the right luck.
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18d ago
Yea but Argentina was tiny then. 1.8 million people. That was before any semblance of modern Argentina. Wikipedia does say 18k? Argentina casualties which is a semi-real conflict.
I think it’s seem fair to say real Argentina didn’t occur until the late 19th-early 20th century immigration waves. It’s even more extreme than pre-post Ellis Wave migration in America.
IMO I think a lot of it is just that the Malvinas are basically the only war Argentina has ever fought. The early wars for Independence etc were when there were few people in Argentina and barely skirmishes. It’s the only war they’ve fought posts mass migration to Argentina so it’s basically the only thing they can talk about in their military history.
Geographically though it is there’s. And within 50 years it probably will be Argentinas because England is declining. Though this may depend on Trumpism and Milei’s long-term alliance. Their claim to it on geography is probably stronger than a bunch of Italians to Israel.
The British paying for dead Pythons conundrum at the individual household scale
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