Quantumfreakonomics
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User ID: 324
Quantumfreakonomics
6mo ago
No business im aware of would not fire you instantly if you get caught.
You’re right, but the federal government is not a business. It has special rules and laws it has to follow that private businesses don’t. The key sections of law here are 5 U.S.C. §2301-§2306 and 5 U.S.C. §7511-§7515 if you want to get a feel for what the administration is going up against, but there are reams and reams of rules like this.
Quantumfreakonomics
6mo ago
Wasn’t the Heritage Foundation part of the existing GOP blob in 2017? The difference between 2017 and 2025 is that conservative think tanks have had four to eight years to go over all of the failures of the first Trump administration and figure out how to do it right the next time. What they came up with was Project 2025.
Quantumfreakonomics
6mo ago
Leaving aside the merits of the issue for a moment, this is totally Project 2025 right? They are clearly implementing some sort of plan for steamrolling the federal bureaucracy, the implementation of which looks suspiciously similar to what is outlined in this particular 922-page PDF.
I guess I’m wondering, are there any interpretations of why Trump tried so hard to distance himself from Project 2025 during the campaign other than the maximally-cynical one? All I can come up with is that there are a whole lot of names on that document that aren’t his, and Trump doesn’t want them taking credit for his glorious presidency.
Quantumfreakonomics
6mo ago
There is no evidence for negative ramifications of the pause.
I mean, “negative” is in the eye of the beholder, but tautologically, the consequence of pausing federal grantmaking is that the people who were doing jobs funded out of federal grants are now no longer getting paid.
Quantumfreakonomics
6mo ago
Disease eradication is good for everyone. It is bad for global health to have a giant reservoir of AIDS, Malaria, Ebola, and god knows what else just waiting to make the jump to the developed world.
Quantumfreakonomics
6mo ago
I’m not sure what the internal political situation in Colombia is at the moment, but I expect there’s lots of pressure on the president to “stand up to Trump” in some way. Hence the aforementioned Spanish-language Twitter rant.
It reminds me a bit of ritual tribal warfare. Everyone gets dressed up, lines up on opposite sides of a valley, shakes their spears and yells at each other for a few hours, then everybody goes home satisfied that they really showed the outgroup who’s boss this time.
Quantumfreakonomics
6mo ago
Someone once said that the great question of modernity is, “how do I get management to take my side?” I’m not sure that’s entirely correct, but it’s an interesting framing.
Right now major subreddits like /r/nfl, /r/nba, and countless others, which as recently as this morning had front pages covered with Twitter links, have all decided to ban links to X/Twitter.
Making this little stunt go viral was incredibly effective at getting management to take one’s side. Whether or not anyone was convinced of Elon’s Naziism as a result of his gesture, the fact that it was being discussed made it socially acceptable to bring up that Elon is a Nazi and demand something be done about it.
Quantumfreakonomics
6mo ago
/r/The_Donald proved years ago that the Reddit algorithm can be trivially gamed. Tribal groups are really good at this kind of informal coordination. Users of these subs are already used to regular political content. Users who don't like it get driven out. Users who agree with the political content see their upvotes as a way to influence public opinion. Emotions are high due to the inauguration. All it takes is a few tens of thousands of Redditors who hate Elon Musk to upvote every single clip to the top of every single sub.
Quantumfreakonomics
6mo ago
You're right that it's not quite what is going on here. I see it more like a hypothetical soccer matchup between Nigeria and Germany where the scoreboard reads "0 NIG - GER 2". The physical elements are there, but the semantic meaning isn't.
Quantumfreakonomics
6mo ago
We can only hope that the hyperstitious slur gesture cascade is reversing. The rest of the internet has finlly grasped such subtleties as context and the use-mention distinction. Reddit, likely for structural reasons, still retains much of the 2018-2022 monoculture.
In Elon's second salute we can see that his hand is yawed inward in a decidedly nonfascist manner. I skimmed through Triumph of the Will just now, and while there are lots of salutes with variable pitch at the wrist, I didn't see a single one with yaw.
Quantumfreakonomics
7mo ago
In reality, it is very hard for the creators/holders to not make claims of value or profits. The incentive for them to hype their coin is too much.
Quantumfreakonomics
7mo ago
I'm thinking through ideas of what to do with this. No promises but there may be room for experimentation (this not how you hype crypto, but honesty matters to me).
My long-term interests are aligned with yours, Hanania Coin holders. We all rise or collapse together.
This is a public offering of unregistered securities. Hanania is in deep shit if this takes off and blows up.
Quantumfreakonomics
7mo ago
If Trump is allowed to do this then what's stopping him from doing things like telling China he won't introduce new tariffs if they buy $1B of his memecoin?
Impeachment. That’s literally it. You can’t say the people didn’t vote for this. The opinion in Trump v United States came out well before the election.
Quantumfreakonomics
7mo ago
After Trump University, Trump Coins (physical), Trump Trading Cards, Trump Media Stock, and whatever the hell this is, I would have expected Trump scam market saturation. At some point it becomes more useful to model it as a form of tithing than con artistry. The people buying this junk must be getting some form of utility out of it, even if it confounds the sophisticated mind.
Quantumfreakonomics
7mo ago
The discussion was had and was highly relevent to subsequent developments. There was more than zero conflict, particularly around the aquisition of X/Twitter, but discussion ultimately won.
Quantumfreakonomics
7mo ago
We’re reaching levels of cope that shouldn’t be possible.
Noting first that this isn’t literally a concession, where is the curiosity here? If someone who is racist and has bad data nevertheless gets the right answer, shouldn’t you like update on that? Shouldn’t you at least consider the possibility that your preconceived notions about at least one of
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Racism,
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Lynn’s data quality, or
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The scientific method
Is wrong?
Quantumfreakonomics
7mo ago
The proper pricing of commodities and equities is actually of great value to society. The Physics Ph.D in a Manhattan office building high-frequency trading corn futures doesn't see anything except numbers on a screen, but corn farmers in Iowa (and consumers of corn like chicken farmers) benefit greatly from accurate and liquid futures markets in corn.
In order to consistantly make money in trading, one has to buy low and sell high. This inherently provides a price-stabilizing effect. Buying when prices are low causes prices to rise; selling when prices are high causes prices to fall.
Quantumfreakonomics
7mo ago
This market will resolve to "Yes" if the US government holds any amount of Bitcoin in its reserves at any point between January 20, 2025, ET and April 29, 2025, 11:59 PM ET. Otherwise, this market will resolve to "No".
Note that the US government confiscating Bitcoin does not count as holding Bitcoin reserves.
The primary resolution source for this market will be official information from the US government and/or the US federal reserve, however a consensus of credible reporting will also be used.
What if Trump tweets that, "the United States holds $X of bitcoin reserves", but he is just referring to the bitcoin that has been confiscated?
Quantumfreakonomics
7mo ago
What I don't get is how a years-long analysis could possibly be useful.
It’s not useful, but that doesn’t matter. The text of NEPA requires agencies to describe “any reasonably foreseeable environmental effects of the proposed agency action.” Try sitting down for 30 seconds to think about all of the reasonably foreseeable environmental effects of setting the environment on fire.
Quantumfreakonomics
7mo ago
Small potatoes compared to what’s possible. It’s like bombing a plane vs flying it into a skyscraper. Imagine you were a patient, clever, and well-prepared terrorist in LA yesterday, how much damage do you think you would be able to cause?
Quantumfreakonomics
7mo ago
A fire just broke out in the Hollywood hills. Hellicopters are swarming. I expext the authorities to pull-out all the stops to protect Hollywood.
The West coast is a pretty unique climate and biome. We don't have fires like this in the Eastern US, even though parts of the East are incredibly overgrown.
Quantumfreakonomics
7mo ago
An uncomfortably large amount of human behavior, even at the very top, is just blindly following the herd. YouTube and Twitter banned Fuentes? Guess Facebook will too. They banned the president of the United States? Right behind you. Zuck’s heart was never in it. I don’t think he sees himself as a particularly ethics-driven person to begin with. Onlyfans-shilling thots are considered spam on the other platforms; on Instagram, they’re the content.
Quantumfreakonomics
7mo ago
If the United States invaded Canada out of the blue one day what would happen? Would they even shoot back? If Canada invoked Article V would the UK or France threaten nuclear war?
I don’t really have a model for this, and yet it could easily happen.
Quantumfreakonomics
7mo ago
I oftentimes wonder just how much microfauna taxonomy is fake. Like, this particular decision had major historical consequences, but the average guy doing minnow or crawfish taxonomy can probably get away with classifying whatever he finds in some obscure South American tributary as a new species without anyone calling him out on it. Are there actually 30,000 species of scarab beetle out there? All of the ones I ever see look the same.
I consider this the equivilent of blaming global warming whenever a hurricane or wildfire hits. You can tell a convincing story about how these processes increase the risk from their associated disasters, but it's still pretty nebulous whether any given event can be attributed to them.
The takeaway for me is to avoid operating helicopters in crowded airspace. I think this should retroactively update our assesment of the FAA's airspace restrictions in response to Hurricane Helene.
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