Quantumfreakonomics
No bio...
User ID: 324
Quantumfreakonomics
7hr ago
The 2021 letter was approved by the pope, but technically it was from the CDF. The 2023 letter was from Pope Francis personally, even if it was literally written by Cardinal Fernandez.
Everyone freaking out about same sex blessings is burying the lead. Look at what Pope Francis says about scripture in the dubium on divine revelation (emphasis mine):
”f) On the other hand, it is true that the magisterium is not superior to the word of God, but it is also true that both the texts of Scripture and the testimonies of tradition need an interpretation that allows us to distinguish their perennial substance from cultural conditioning. It is evident, for example, in biblical texts (such as Ex 21:20-21) and in some magisterial interventions that tolerated slavery (cf. Nicholas V, Bull Oum Diversas, 1452). This is not a minor issue given its intimate connection with the perennial truth of the inalienable dignity of the human person. These texts are in need of interpretation. The same is true for some New Testament considerations on women (1 Cor 11:3-10; 1 Tim 2:11-14) and for other texts of Scripture and testimonies of tradition that cannot be repeated literally today.
When people like Bishop Strickland accuse Francis of undermining the deposit of faith, this is what they mean. The pope just cited multiple New Testament passages which give specific instructions for how women should behave in church as something which “cannot be repeated literally today.”
If you want a real laugh, look at his response to the dubium on women priests. For context, in 1994 Pope John Paul II issued ORDINATIO SACERDOTALIS, which declared:
”Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church's divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful.”
Now let’s read Pope Francis’s interpretation:
”c) On the other hand, to be rigorous, let us recognize that a clear and authoritative doctrine has not yet been exhaustively developed about the exact nature of a “definitive statement.“ It is not a dogmatic definition, and yet it must be observed by all. No one can publicly contradict it and yet it can be the object of study, as is the case with the validity of ordinations in the Anglican Communion.”
”A clear and authoritative doctrine has not yet been exhaustively developed about the exact nature of a ‘definitive statement.’” This is an absolute disaster. I don’t see how the church comes back from this.
Quantumfreakonomics
2d ago
Isn’t this what the whole API brouhaha was about? Reddit wants to force everyone onto the official app so they can sell ads and collect analytics.
Quantumfreakonomics
5d ago
The line of reasoning enabled by putting forth the Unabomber is not only intellectually lazy but also grossly uninformed. To truly understand the arguments against industrial civilization, it's imperative to read Jacques Ellul (as well as Weil, Postman, McLuhan, even Heidegger, etc.), whose work provides a foundational lens for critiquing technology's role in society that far predates and is ultimately superior to Kaczynski's infamous manifesto.
Wut? Have you even read "Industrial Society and Its Future"? It's an absolute masterpiece of philosophy. You don't even seem to disagree with his thesis. This is like if someone told me, "I did not care for The Godfather," and then upon further examination they declared that they love Italian Mafia movies, but just hate The Godfather in particular. Huh?
Every open-minded educated person knows the 14 words, "the Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race." Do they remember these words because some recluse killed a few people with mail bombs in the 80s? No, they remember them because they are an authentic summary of a 35,000 word magnum opus.
I have not read Ellul's "The Technological Society," but I did scroll through a PDF I found online. It gives every indication of being an overlong dull drag. Each and every page of Kaczynski drips with insight. His truth bombs are more powerful than his potassium chlorate ever could have been.
Quantumfreakonomics
5d ago
No, but you might get a really good blogpost, and that's even better.
Quantumfreakonomics
6d ago
Back when I was a contractor I was asked to park in private “no parking” zones all the time. It would be quite strange if a third party could come and tow me without either my or the property owner’s consent.
Quantumfreakonomics
7d ago
I wouldn’t be opposed so some sort of maritime law of salvage for improperly parked vehicles. Someone blocks your driveway? You get to sell off their catalytic converter.
Quantumfreakonomics
8d ago
> be born in 1920s Polish Galicia
> be Ukrainian-speaking peasant
> be oppressed by ethnic-majority poles
> West side of country gets invaded by Germany
> your side of country gets invaded by Soviet Russia
> have to deal with literal fucking Stalin for two years
> get invaded by Germany
> liberation.jpg
> ”Hey kid, wanna fight the Russians and Poles that have been oppressing you your whole life?”
> 80 years later
> “fuck you. You picked the wrong side”
Quantumfreakonomics
8d ago
First off: There's no way this would work. I mean, it might work in the sense that you can write whatever numbers you want on a document and hope the IRS doesn't look into it, but there's no way it would hold up in tax court.
Second off: Jesus Christ the tax code is impenetrable. I'm not a lawyer, but I'm usually pretty good at finding relevant citations whenever I need them. I've never seen anything like Title 26. It's obscene.
Quantumfreakonomics
8d ago
SBF was right about books. Sorry bookworms, but they’re obsolete. Every good book should have been either a blogpost or a video lecture.
Quantumfreakonomics
9d ago
Was it just because of the magic worlds "crypto" and "blockchain"? What the hell was supposed to be going on here? You can buy a share of some (generally terrible) image, but you won't own it, the original creator will, and many others can also own a share of it, but because it's "blockchain" this somehow makes it vastly valuable?
Yes, this is exactly it. Like other highly-speculative assets, the "fair price" of an NFT can be approximated by [expected value of the asset conditional on the bull case being true] x [probability of the bull case being true]. In the case of NFTs, the bull case is, "the Ethereum blockchain becomes integrated into all aspects of life and is recognized as the authoritative ledger of monetary transactions, ownership, and recordkeeping." In such a scenario, ownership of the NFT would in fact correspond to legal ownership of the property represented by the NFT.
Of course, now that crypto has been exposed, it is pretty obvious that [probability of the bull case being true] is approximately zero, so the value of NFTs are approximately zero.
Quantumfreakonomics
9d ago
It’s a bit odd how gambling is hardly mentioned in the Bible. Was the addictive technology that makes it so dangerous not invented yet?
Its interesting to read through the OSHA fatality reports. Almost every fatality is either someone falling to their death (usually while working construction), or getting run over. There's also the occasional freak accident. Is there any reasonable standard that would have protected this guy from the literal bomb someone had put in the scrap metal bin?
Quantumfreakonomics
12d ago
…Yes? Perhaps I’d feel different if I actually had a daughter and had watched her grow up, but this doesn’t feel like that big of a dilemma. If you don’t want Elon Musk solving the fertility crisis with your daughter, then you don’t want to win. Your reproductive fitness incentives are aligned with hers.
Now, with my wife/gf? Absolutely not. He can get fucked
Quantumfreakonomics
12d ago
Here’s a thought I had today: This is only happening because the Supreme Court banned affirmative action.
I was rereading Zvi’s moral mazes sequence, and one of the concepts that stood out to me is the idea that ambitious people will self-modify themselves, right down to their own epistemology and values, in order to better conform with workplace culture. When affirmative action was “in”, all the administrators and middle managers were in a very real sense unable to see the incompetence and lack of results that came out of programs like Kendi’s Antiracist Center. They had to be good because they were affirmative-action programs, and affirmative action was good. Now that this paradigm has been shattered by the highest court in the land, the scales have fallen from their eyes. They can see plainly the fruits of what they have done. Affirmative action? Never heard of her. We hire strictly on merit here. We have always done that. It was just a few loons in the early 2020s with their wacky ideas. We never really bought into them.
Quantumfreakonomics
12d ago
How on Earth was Danny Masterson actually convicted?
It’s pretty simple. Rule of evidence 413. This is an exception to the general principle (rule 404) that prior bad acts are inadmissible to prove propensity in court. If you were charging someone with robbing a bank, you wouldn’t be able to put a witness on the stand who says they were robbed by the defendant at a CVS in a completely separate incident years prior. That’s prejudicial and against rule 404. Rule 413 let’s you do that in sexual assault cases.
Twitter Blue generates considerable revenue by now.
Does it? Twitter Blue currently has around 700,000 subscribers, which means that Twitter Blue should be bringing in around $21m per quarter for Twitter. At this rate, it would take over 500 years for Twitter Blue revenues to cover the $44 billion acquisition cost. This doesn’t include advertising and other revenue, but it also doesn’t include operating costs either. Elon can probably get X running a profit, but he will never make back his initial investment.
Quantumfreakonomics
13d ago
Here are the X rules for monetization. I see a few avenues of attack if parliament wants to throw the book at him.
Local law: You are responsible for complying with applicable local laws and regulations while earning revenue on X.
I'm not too familiar with the timeline, but if he committed sexual assault at the same time he was earning Twitter revenue, then technically he was in violation of the terms and conditions. (This one is extremely nitpicky.)
Enforcement philosophy: All creators monetizing content on X must comply with the requirements described and referenced on this page. Should you violate any one of these requirements, act in a manner directly counter to X’s purpose or principles, or otherwise act in a way we deem potentially harmful to X or its customers, we may take some or all of the enforcement actions outlined below.
Would you want to be the PR drone responsible for telling an MP that nothing Russell Brand did is directly counter to X's purpose or principles? I wouldn't.
Quantumfreakonomics
13d ago
The greatest Substack-era Yarvin piece is "Big Tech Has No Power At All". All of the hidden forces presumed to be exerting influence on Zuckerburg have been revealed in the open to be operating in the same way against Musk. It was only through sheer force of will that Elon was able to endure the onslaught -- at great personal cost. That 40 billion dollars is never coming back. Nobody who has to answer to shareholders could ever pull the moves Musk is making with X.
Quantumfreakonomics
13d ago
It is always, objectively true that there will be more opportunities.
In a loose, almost meaningless sense, yes, there will always be more opportunities. The epistemic parameters that actually matter are 1.) What is the probability that my next attempt will succeed? and 2.) What is the probability that I will ever succeed? There are humans on Earth right now who's parameters are both essentially one, and humans on Earth who's parameters are both essentially zero. This means that these parameters need to be estimated empirically using Bayes's Theorem. You might object that you should "just turn your brain off bro" and ignore all this fancy reasoning stuff, but then you run the risk of ending up like this guy. Does this guy need to simply "move on" and remember that "it is always objectively true that there will be more opportunities"?
Now, this guy is not the median male. I myself have had better luck than him (I was able to get multiple actual dates!), so I'm comfortable saying that he's more than 1 standard deviation below the mean in terms of all-inclusive attractiveness. Is he more than 2 standard deviations below the mean? I'm honestly not sure. This is the buzzsaw that millions of young men are being tossed into with no warning by everyone's cheery platitudes. Enough. If we can't be honest on TheMotte of all places about what it's really like out there, then we can't be honest about it anywhere.
Quantumfreakonomics
13d ago
Quantumfreakonomics
13d ago
I’m sorry bro. We’ve all been there.
They say “the worst thing she can say is no” but I asked a woman who I’m sorta friends with on a date via text and she read the message but hasn’t responded for 11 days and that’s so much worse than “no.”
You now understand how completely unhinged conventional-wisdom dating advice is. You’re not supposed to tell bright-eyed youngsters, “actually the worst thing that can happen is that she becomes viscerally disgusted by the thought of being with you,” but that’s the truth. That’s not necessarily what happened here, but it is a realistic option that one needs to be aware of.
If not, it's not a big deal, we can pretend this didn't happen and keep being friends lol
I get what you were going for here. You heard somewhere that the biggest thing women fear about dating is feeling unsafe, so you wanted to be as non-threatening as possible. Women hate this for some reason. I don’t know why, but they do. You will drive yourself insane if you try to figure out the deeper operating principles at play which cause this bizarre-seeming behavior. Just accept it.
Unfortunately I don’t have any practical advice for what to do going forward. If you wanted a sanity check, you are making the typical mistakes that a young man reasoning from male-brained priors would be expected to make, so no, you are not going insane.
Quantumfreakonomics
14d ago
These sorts of public-facing nonbinding documents are often missing important context which committed members understand. Everybody knows that the banning of polygamy was a reaction to political circumstances (Utah wanted to become a state, and congress was reluctant to condone polygamy), not a reaction to divine revelation about the nature of the eternal law. If a man's celestial wife dies, and he remarries in the temple, he now has two celestial wives for eternity. I couldn't find anything definitive, but it seems like there are certain circumstances where a man may be sealed to multiple living women at the same time, even if they aren't civilly "married".
"The living man, after being granted clearance, can then be sealed to a second living woman in the temple. He is legally married to only one woman, but on the records of the church, he is then sealed to two (or more) living women. Any children from either sealing are “born in the covenant” with him, and are sealed to him.
It dawned on us that despite my husband’s explicit wishes and request, he would continue to be sealed to his first, living wife. If he wanted to be sealed to me, his actual legal wife, I would have to agree to be part of a polygamous family for eternity."
Quantumfreakonomics
14d ago
I get that the triple parenthesis is easily pattern-matched to low-effort and low-class sniping at Jews, but it's an incredibly concise way to convey the idea that [this group] is aligned with stereotypically Jewish interests in a way which conflicts with their nominal mission.
Access to medication is gated behind prescriptions. Even if you know exactly what is wrong with you and exactly what medicine you need, you have to go to a doctor to access it. I guess this is more inflating demand rather that restricting supply, but the result is the same
More options
Context Copy link