Quantumfreakonomics
No bio...
User ID: 324
Quantumfreakonomics
2mo ago
You think Putin doesn’t have the resources to murder someone and make it look like natural causes? He has access to tools you can’t possibly imagine. The doctors doing the autopsy don’t have to be in on it if they don’t know what to look for.
Quantumfreakonomics
8mo ago
You’re forgetting the fact that Austin is in Austin. If this happened the national media would stir up George Floyd-level mob of “patriotic citizens” who would storm the governor’s mansion and the state capitol. If the Texas National Guard fired upon these protesters, it would be Fort Sumter all over again.
Quantumfreakonomics
9mo ago
I haven't seen anywhere list all of the federal laws that were allegedly broken.
The most obvious is 33 U.S. Code § 403
Quantumfreakonomics
11mo ago
I can’t believe this shit. The front running candidate is probably going to be in jail on election night, and the challengers are scrambling to find an angle of attack. It’s right in front of you ya imbeciles.
Quantumfreakonomics
1mo ago
The embassy to the Vatican is in Rome, Italy. They didn't fly the trans flag inside Vatican City.
Quantumfreakonomics
4mo ago
Yudkowsky
cannot credibly commit to cooperate in a prisoners' dilemma or be held to an existing agreement.
Come on man. Yudkowsky has made more progress on this general problem than any other living philosopher.
Quantumfreakonomics
6mo ago
I do think there's a pretty big gap in sexual maturity between 14 and 15-16. I feel no guilt for going "nice" whenever I see a hot teacher get fired for having sex with a male student 15 or older, but when he's 13 or 14 that seems fucked up.
Quantumfreakonomics
10mo ago
No? I guess you could say they were “faked” in the sense that all social science experiments are “faked”.
What I have seen are allegations that the experiments were unethical, usually framed in a way that suggests the results cannot be trusted (the suggestion is transparently bullshit. Anyone with the slightest understanding of the scientific method knows that informed consent forms make experiments less reliable). You may have been misled by one of them.
Quantumfreakonomics
8d ago
That specific scenario may or may not be plausible. I don’t know how the federal government’s payroll software works, but that is the level that these things need to be analyzed on if you want a clear or definitive answer.
Quantumfreakonomics
28d ago
I love this subthread because it shows how absurd it is to read the New Testament as a consistent (much less inerrant) theological tome. Romans isn't "the gospel according to Paul", it's a pledge drive. He is asking for money, both for himself, and the Jewish Christians in Judea.
I hope to see you in passing as I go to Spain, and to be helped on my journey there by you, once I have enjoyed your company for a while. At present, however, I am going to Jerusalem bringing aid to the saints. For Macedonia and Achaia have been pleased to make some contribution for the poor among the saints at Jerusalem. For they were pleased to do it, and indeed they owe it to them. For if the Gentiles have come to share in their spiritual blessings, they ought also to be of service to them in material blessings. When therefore I have completed this and have delivered to them what has been collected, I will leave for Spain by way of you. I know that when I come to you I will come in the fullness of the blessing of Christ.
I appeal to you, brothers, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to strive together with me in your prayers to God on my behalf, that I may be delivered from the unbelievers in Judea, and that my service for Jerusalem may be acceptable to the saints, so that by God's will I may come to you with joy and be refreshed in your company. May the God of peace be with you all. Amen.
Once you view Romans in this light, all the little oddities about Israel start to make sense. Paul wasn't particularly popular with Jewish Christians at the time. He was trying to regain his street cred.
Quantumfreakonomics
5mo ago
Speaking of blurry boundaries, Nonlinear almost certainly violated either federal tax law or minimum wage laws, and potentially immigration law too.
Quantumfreakonomics
8mo ago
Hearsay is the wrong term, but there are hard-coded exceptions to evidence rules which only apply to sexual assault and not to other crimes.
Quantumfreakonomics
8mo ago
like a woman I know who talked about the need to ban gas stoves for the environment while a handyman was installing her new 50kBTU outdoor propane patio heater which feeds from the same tank as her removed gas stove.
Some people are so lacking in understanding that they don't even know when they're using the wrong units.
Quantumfreakonomics
10mo ago
Wikipedia claims that; the opinion of the court claims Lemon had already been effectively set aside.
Yeah, by previous Roberts court opinions like American Legion v. American Humanist Association
SFFA overturned neither Bakke (which was a mess of a set of opinions, and in fact the ruling was in favor of Bakke) nor even the later Grutter which endorsed Powell's opinion in Bakke. The ruling was that Harvard and UNCs programs were impermissible under Grutter.
If your take is, "actually affirmative action has been illegal the whole time," I guess you might be right, but that's kind of missing the point.
I only wish it overturned US v. Miller.
It did. The two opinions are fundamentally irreconcilable. Nobody knows how much of the NFA is constitutional at the moment.
Ordinarily I wouldn't post personal Reddit drama here, but the thread is slow and I'm mad.
Here is a post that I saw on /r/baseball:
Anthony Bass promoting anti-LGBTQ propaganda on his Instagram
You probably noticed that the thread is locked with a moderator message: "The trolls are flooding in, and the conversation has run its course at this point. Friendly reminder to love your neighbor, and that it's not intolerant to oppose bigotry. Everyone have a nice holiday Monday!"
This message was posted only a few minutes after I was permanantly banned from /r/baseball for comments in that very thread! In fact, I believe they are referring to me as one of the "trolls flooding in". Lets take a look under the hood to see what counts as perma-ban and threadlock-worthy comments.
First, the actual article in question. Anthony Bass is a pitcher for the Toronto Blue Jays. He posted an Instagram story saying Christians should boycott Target and Bud Light. That's it. That's the "anti-LGBTQ propaganda". I posted a top-level comment in the thread sarcastically making this point.
Is this a high-effort comment? No, but if you are familiar with the sports subs at all then you know that this type of low-effort sarcasm is all over the place. That's the posting culture there. I also got involved in another comment thread.
JaysRaineman73 -18 points 2 hours ago: "Who the fuck cares. So tired of this shit. I only care about how he plays on the field. If he’s not abusing or hurting anyone, it’s irrelevant."
realparkingbrake 11 points 2 hours ago: "On what planet does denying people the same rights as everyone else not qualify as abusing or hurting them?"
QuantumFreakonomics -4 points 2 hours ago: "What rights do they not have? Name them? How is he hurting anyone? How does asking people to not purchase products from a specific mega-corp hurt anyone? Am I hurting people every time I go to Walmart and not Target? Please, I’m begging you. Actually think about the things you are saying. Don’t just parrot the same irrelevant lines you’ve seen other people use."
PuppyPunter21 4 points an hour ago: "Well, if any players live in Florida, they have recently passed quite a few laws targeted against them. The continued promotion of these types of boycotts encites more hate. Covid caused more hate towards Asians, Kayne West promoted more antisemitism. Ignoring it isn't a solution."
QuantumFreakonomics 3 points an hour ago: " 'Well, if any players live in Florida, they have recently passed quite a few laws targeted against them.' What rights did these laws take away? The right to have teachers come out in front of their students? I had never heard of that "right" before a few years ago. 'The continued promotion of these types of boycotts encites more hate. Covid caused more hate towards Asians' Is your position that someone shouldn't be allowed to talk about an issue if it could possibly cause someone else to hate another group? I don't see how that is a workable position at all. Should we not have instituted Covid restrictions or even complained about covid in order to prevent Asian hate? 'Ignoring it isn't a solution.' Why not? People speaking their mind on public issues is the bedrock of Democracy. Some of those people are going to say things you don't like. A democracy where certain issues are not free to be discussed is not much of a democracy at all.
This was the extent of my participation in the thread. I did not expect my comments to be particularly well-received by the Reddit population, but I felt that I pointed out enough legitimate issues that I would be safe from accusations of trolling. I was wrong.
Here is the modmail message I received informing me of my permanent ban, along with the brief conversation we had before they muted me with their absolute power.1 For reference, here are the /r/baseball rules. Would an honest reading of these rules give you any reason at all to think that anything I posted would not be allowed, much less permaban worthy? You would have to be steeped in internet leftist culture to understand that, "Trolling, threatening, harassing, or inciting violence towards individuals or groups will not be tolerated. Racist, sexist, or otherwise intolerant language in both comments and submissions will be removed." means that pointed questions against the progressive consensus will get you tossed out.
I understand why so many subreddits are complete circlejerks now. It's not about echo-chambers and voting dynamics. They literally just banned everyone who disagreed.
1. Here is the source they cited for their "62%" figure. I'll let you decide for yourself whether this poll is applicable
Quantumfreakonomics
4mo ago
At this point arguing Catholic theology feels like arguing Star Wars lore. It's fake. It doesn't have to make sense. It doesn't make sense. It was always fake, but now it's super doubleplus ultra fake. If you try to apply logic to it you will end up running in circles.
Quantumfreakonomics
1mo ago
If you've ever come across someone on the Effective Altruism forum or ACX comments section who cares a lot about wild animal/insect welfare, you might have wondered if they'd thought things through.
Well, you'd be right.
I'll be honest. My first reaction was of sneering contempt. Animal welfare is IMO the most counterproductive idea that gets serious traction in rationalist spaces, so there is a good bit of schadenfreude from seeing, "I never thought the bugs would eat MY utility," out in the wild.
Still, I don't know anything about this person other than that she lives in a London flat and works for an EA organization (80,000 hours). I am reminded of that XKCD where even the most obvious facts are learned by someone for the first time thousands of times a day. Maybe Europe really is a commieblock hellscape where man lives entirely divorced from nature, where supposedly well-informed people can enter their late 20s without an intuitive understanding of the exponential growth of pest biomass. I remember well the time as a wee lad I saw an entire summer's growth of backyard tomato plants devoured in a week by 2 or 3 hornworms. Not everyone grows up with such a visceral demonstration of what civilization is up against.
Maybe these people really do need to touch grass.
Quantumfreakonomics
4mo ago
What is the steelman for voting for Trump in the primaries?
He's not a true outsider anymore. He's not an unknown quantity. We know his temperament. We know his governance style. What does he provide over Desantis/Haley/Ramaswamy? He didn't build the wall the first time, why would he do it now?
I have some ideas, but they're all terrible once you think about them for ten seconds. I am willing to believe that the median voter is unable to think clearly for ten seconds before being hijacked by monkey-brain, but I'd like to make sure I'm not missing something obvious.
1. Personal Loyalty: This is close to the Richard Hanania theory. Personal loyalty would make sense if Trump was loyal in turn to his supporters, but he isn't. How many of his lawyers have gone to jail? How many orange-blooded Trump fans lost their jobs or got arrested for believing in him too hard on January 6? He could have pardoned these people, but he didn't. Orange Man good because Orange Man good.
2. Perceived Injustice: Yes, Trump has been treated unfairly by the media and the Washington establishment. Lots of people have been. I can understand why this would be seen as a necessary condition (e.g. "nobody liked by the 'elites' could ever be a good president"), but why would this be a sufficient condition? Surely electability and general competence matter more than an extra standard-deviation worth of grievances against the media.
3. Hatred: I'm not talking about "Hate™". I'm talking about a genuine desire to see one's political enemies suffer. It's not even clear to me that Trump would be better at this than other Republican candidates, but I feel I would be missing something if I didn't put it on the list.
Quantumfreakonomics
8mo ago
The elephant in the room when comparing sexual assault to other crime -- like say, bike theft -- is that there is a well known, 100% reliable way to legally acquire a bike. Walk into a bike shop and buy one. There is no reason (outside of emergencies) why a normal person should have to engage in any action that could ever be confused with bike theft.
It's actually worse than this. With sexual assault, often times the only difference between "a beautiful night to remember" and "the worst thing that can happen to a woman" is the physical appearance of the person.
I'm not sure exactly how this affects the framework you've chosen, but I do know that any discussion of sexual assault (or sex in general) that doesn't explicitly address these two points has a tendency to go off the rails into La La Land, where nothing said has any correspondence to reality.
Quantumfreakonomics
7mo ago
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said, "It's not acceptable to hit a hospital". Egypt said it denounced the attack "in the strongest terms".
This is low-key hilarious. Hamas found the cheat code.
Commit terrorist attack: Western armies hunt you down with the force of 1000 suns.
Commit terrorist attack and hide in a hospital: Western nations will denounce anyone who tries to stop you in the strongest possible terms.
Quantumfreakonomics
7mo ago
I knew this shit would happen. The IDF took too long to put boots on the ground, and now the "international community" wants them to back off from destroying the open-air terrorist base within walking distance of Israeli population centers. Why on Earth is, "Hamas gets to keep launching rockets, stockpiling munitions, and planning the next ground assault," even on the table? Any sane country would give Palestine an ultimatum. They can choose between:
- Total and complete disarmament, or
- Total and complete annihilation.
If you let them chose "3. Build your military headquarters under a hospital and use your own populace as hostages," of course they're going to pick that.
If the United States thinks that the Palestinian authorities have a legitimate claim to Israeli territory, then why are we supporting Israel at all? If the United States thinks that they don't, then why aren't we bombing them back to the stone age as part of the war on terror?
Quantumfreakonomics
4mo ago
It is quite unpleasant to argue against the core assumptions of veganism in a way that is epistemically rigorous. One has to tear down the entire concept of ethics as it is typically understood, then rebuild some sort of timeless decision theory-based normative system that reproduces the common-sense undisputed norms of "ethical" human behavior, but hopefully without the gaping security hole of giving in to utility monsters and bottomless pits of suffering.
> But QuantumFreakonomics you wise sage, I inherently care about the suffering of all sentient beings. It is part of my utility function, and I don't want to change my utility function.
You are wrong about your own utility function. You do not inherently care about the subjective experience of shrimp in the Atlantic Ocean. I don't believe you. You are confusing type I goods (goods which have intrinsic value, i.e. are valued for their own sake) with type II goods (goods which have only extrinsic value, i.e. are valued for their ability to produce/acquire type I goods). Your own pleasure and your own lack of suffering are type I goods. The pleasure and lack of suffering of anonymous random sentient creatures is not a type I good, but it is often (but not always) a type II good. Assuming that the pleasure and lack of suffering of anonymous random sentient creatures is a type I good is an error, as is assuming that it is always a type II good. No one wants to say this in polite company because it makes you sound like a massive asshole, but when no one has the guts to point this out you end up with people advocating to redirect the malaria net funding (which saved 100,000+ lives) to saving chickens instead.
Quantumfreakonomics
9mo ago
I can think of a couple reasons they weren't prepared:
-
People weren't expecting white conservative protestors to actually do anything.
-
If there was a conspiracy to prevent law enforcement from being deployed at the capitol, cui bono? There was at least one high-ranking government official who might have wanted the capitol undefended.
Also, since when does Nancy Pelosi have veto power over deploying the DC national guard? The President of the United States has that authority.
Quantumfreakonomics
9mo ago
Article II Section 1 Clause 2 of the Constitution gives states the power to determine how to select electors. Amendment 12 says that all of the certified ballots are to be counted and the winner is the next President of the United States. It doesn’t matter whether Trump “thinks” the results are illegitimate. He has no jurisdiction here. The electoral college had already voted when the call happened. It was over.
I don't mean to be flippant, but more substantive points have been already addressed. More than anything else, his stuff was a slog to read. I can't tell you how many times I've noticed a potentially interesting post, seen a giant subthread started by Hylinka, and had my eyes glaze over trying to read it. I do remember having vaguely positive associations with his name in the past, but I can't think of anything specific in the last couple of years.
More options
Context Copy link