Quantumfreakonomics
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Quantumfreakonomics
2yr ago
There's an idea that I've seen a lot in these kind of articles that I find quite odd. It's the idea that attempting to convince someone that they should date you (or otherwise change their sexual preference/behavior) is inherently wrong and abusive.
But as Gopalakrishnan got further into the movement, she realized that “the advertised reality of EA is very different from the actual reality of EA,” she says. She noticed that EA members in the Bay Area seemed to work together, live together, and sleep together, often in polyamorous sexual relationships with complex professional dynamics. Three times in one year, she says, men at informal EA gatherings tried to convince her to join these so-called “polycules.” When Gopalakrishnan said she wasn’t interested, she recalls, they would “shame” her or try to pressure her, casting monogamy as a lifestyle governed by jealousy, and polyamory as a more enlightened and rational approach.
Note that what is absent from this anecdote is any sort of actual coercion. It seems that, "casting monogamy as a lifestyle governed by jealousy, and polyamory as a more enlightened and rational approach," is interpreted as "shame" or "pressure". Now, I don't agree with that argument in favor of polyamory, but it's a perfectly valid argument one can make. If, as Gopalakrishnan and TIME seem to think, that no flirting or discussion of sexuality should be allowed at even informal gatherings, it begs the question, where and how should people try to meet partners? I'm not going to take the establishment media perspective on sexual ethics seriously until it answers that basic question.
Quantumfreakonomics
4mo ago
I've been digging into some of these laws and regulations. I'm coming away more convinced than ever that democratic governance is a myth. No regular person could possibly comprehend the byzantine labyrinth of rules, regulations, and case law required to competently evaluate government decision making.
Every spigot of federal funds grows into a hydrothermal vent of highly-specialized fauna perfectly adapted for siphoning-off those sweet sweet grants. Congress can't fix the problem, because all they are able or willing to do is appropriate more funding for things.
Quantumfreakonomics
9mo ago
Reddit's politics reflect the fact that the company is based in San Francisco. But it is left of center for San Francisco, which puts it far, far to the left of the nation.
This doesn't get the causality right in my opinion. When you look at the big censorious changes that happened on Reddit, they were usually demanded by the volunteer moderators, not by the paid admins. Mods going on strike is what caused Reddit to ban /r/NoNewNormal just days after the the CEO posted a poorly-recieved announcement defending free speech and debate. Mods also whined for years about "brigading" by /r/TheDonald. What they were really upset about was that TheDonald was attracting a right-wing userbase.
This is part of why it was such a big deal when Reddit decided to steamroll the mods on the unpopular API changes last summer. They had literally never done that before. They always caved.
Quantumfreakonomics
9mo ago
What is going on in Springfield, Ohio? 20,000 Haitian arrivals into a town of 60,000 seems insane, but the New York Times seems to back it up. I definitely don’t trust the NYT to give an honest portrayal of what the situation is like on the ground, but I don’t really trust a lot of the rumors going around Twitter either. I am seeing reports of Haitians killing the ducks at the park and eating them. There are even secondhand reports of Haitians eating pet cats.
What I am not seeing however is geolocated footage or images. How hard can it be to send a guy to the park to see if there are any ducks left? I am legitimately confused. None of this seems to make sense.
Quantumfreakonomics
2yr ago
Furthermore; there is little need for cars in a place like Oxford.
THEN WHY ARE THERE CARS EVERYWHERE?
This is the most Orwellian piece of journalism I’ve read in months. No understanding whatsoever of economics. Traffic isn’t bad because traffic is bad. Traffic is bad because it makes it take longer to get where you want to go. Banning cars to reduce traffic doesn’t solve the problem, it makes the problem worse because now it takes longer to get somewhere than it did when you were stuck in traffic.
Quantumfreakonomics
2mo ago
What makes this case so deliciously ironic is that the only reason that Abrego Garcia was granted withholding of removal in 2019 was because his life was in danger due to rampant gang activity. The thing that actually solved the problem was locking up all the gangsters with little to no due process.
This kind of thing is exactly why trust in institutionalism is collapsing. I originally thought that this was a stupid hill for the administration to die on. It may still turn out to be a bad idea, but Trumps instincts have once again shown a method to his madness.
Quantumfreakonomics
1yr 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
6mo ago
Romanian Supreme Court Cancels Election, Overthrows Results of First Round
Recently, unknown dark horse anti-NATO candidate Călin Georgescu shocked the world by winning a plurality of the vote in the first round of Romania's presidential election. Key to his victory was an intense social media campaign, with a particular emphasis on Tik-Tok.
Romania's Supereme Court has today declared these results null and void. The full opinion setting out their reasoning has yet to be published, but this is almost certainly due to allegations of Russian interference. I have not seen any credible accusations that votes themselves were fraudulently cast, only that Georgescu's campaign recieved improper (illegal?) assistance from Russian media operations. This is IMO the most important outstanding question.
Quantumfreakonomics
1yr ago
If we're going to just be giving money away, give it to the workers, not to excess elites.
It's not really going to elites. It's going to middle-class young women. They are both the beneficiaries of the loans (being the ones getting worthless humanities degrees) and the ones who's salaries are being paid with the loans (being the ones working in education and education administration).
The industries of choice for middle-class young women are 1. Education, and 2. Health Care. A few rhetorical discussion questions:
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Where does government money seem to be flowing these days?
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Which industries are being ravaged by cost disease?
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What demographic forms the base of the Democratic Party?
I am not sure at the moment which way causality flows, but I do not believe these things are unrelated.
Quantumfreakonomics
2yr ago
New free speech rules just dropped: COUNTERMAN v. COLORADO.
"True threats" are not protected speech under the first amendment. This is not in dispute. Of course, this begs the questions, "what is a true threat?" and "what elements does the government have to prove in order to use the true threat exception?" The State of Colorado (and The United States) argues that the state only need prove that the speech would have been understood by a reasonable person as threatening. The defense argues that the state must prove that the defendant himself knew that the speech would cause fear or be considered threatening.
The facts of the case:
From 2014 to 2016, petitioner Billy Counterman sent hundreds of Facebook messages to C. W., a local singer and musician. The two had never met, and C. W. never responded. In fact, she repeatedly blocked Counterman. But each time, he created a new Facebook account and resumed his contacts. Some of his messages were utterly prosaic—(“Good morning sweetheart”; “I am going to the store would you like anything?”)—except that they were coming from a total stranger. Others suggested that Counterman might be surveilling C. W. He asked “[w]as that you in the white Jeep?”; referenced “[a] fine display with your partner”; and noted “a couple [of] physical sightings.” And most critically, a number expressed anger at C. W. and envisaged harm befalling her: “Fuck off permanently.” “Staying in cyber life is going to kill you.” “You’re not being good for human relations. Die.”
The messages put C. W. in fear and upended her daily existence. She believed that Counterman was “threat[ening her] life”; “was very fearful that he was following” her; and was “afraid [she] would get hurt.” As a result, she had “a lot of trouble sleeping” and suffered from severe anxiety. She stopped walking alone, declined social engagements, and canceled some of her performances, though doing so caused her financial strain. Eventually, C. W. decided that she had to contact the authorities.
Colorado charged Counterman under a statute making it unlawful to “[r]epeatedly . . . make[] any form of communication with another person” in “a manner that would cause a reasonable person to suffer serious emotional distress and does cause that person . . . to suffer serious emotional distress.” The only evidence the State proposed to introduce at trial were his Facebook messages.
This case is a little strange. It appears to be a stalking case, yet it was litigated on appeal on pure first amendment grounds. The reason for this is that the state didn't introduce any evidence of actual stalking. Thus the whole case hinged on Counterman's digital communications with C. W. The decision was 7-2, with Barrett and Thomas dissenting. It's interesting to see how some of the older generation still sees the expansive interpretation of the first amendment as a modern, left-wing innovation, and I suppose in some way it is. The ACLU for all it's faults is still willing to file a brief defending an alleged stalker on the basis of free speech.
Quantumfreakonomics
1yr ago
The Bipartisan Consensus Against... Lab-Grown Meat?
This was not a tweet I expected to see today:
Pains me deeply to agree with Crash-and-Burn Ron [DeSantis], but I co-sign this.
As a member of @SenateAgDems and as some dude who would never serve that slop to my kids, I stand with our American ranchers and farmers.
-Senator John Fetterman
Lol. LMAO even.
I am not a person that cares much about the suffering of animals, especially not the ones that taste good. Still, strictly speaking, the suffering is not an integral part of the process. If it could be removed, all else being equal, that would not decrease my utility in any way. I am agnostic on lab-grown meat. If it tastes good, is cheap, and is of comparable healthiness to legacy meat, I will eat it.
I can't help but be reminded of the law of undignified failure. Cultured meat has been a staple of the tech-futurist utopian memeplex for years, if not decades. Gallons of digital ink have been spilled discussing the feasibility and/or inevitability (or lack thereof) of cultured meat on places like the Effective Altruism Forum. Skimming through the top results, I don't see, "what if the proles hate our guts so much that they ban cultured meat out of spite?" on anyone's "factors to consider". It's also a harsh lesson that even the most positive-seeming improvements have to face-off against reliance interests who want things to stay the same. There is a lobby for everything.
Quantumfreakonomics
1yr ago
Somewhat Contra Scott Alexander on Dating
Astral Codex Ten: "In Defense Of Describable Dating Preferences"
I say "somewhat contra" because there is a bit of a disguised Motte and Bailey here. The Motte is that describable preferences like age, race, culture, politics, relationship style, and desire for children have strong predictive and filtering power. This is obviously true. The implied Bailey is that modern dating apps suck, long-form dating profiles like old OKCupid and "Date-me" docs are much better, and the nerdy rationalist coke-bottle glasses waifu you've always dreamed about is just around the corner. This is false.
- The argument from efficient markets
In the old days, dating sites were based around writing a profile and answering questions about yourself. In current year, online dating programs have converged around the "swipe" model. Why? One common theory I see is that users (customers) finding high-quality long-term relationships is bad for the app, because it causes users to leave and decreases the userbase. This sounds plausible, but if it were true we would expect to see a "two models" system. One mass-commercialized model where people looking for casual fun can swipe to find hookups, and a second non-profit or premium model where people can write long-form profiles to find high-quality partners. What we observe instead is convergence around the "swipe" model. Some would blame Match Group for buying OKCupid and monopolizing the market:
But Match Group isn't a monopoly anymore. In fact, their main competitor, Bumble, is also a swipe app. Sounds more like revealed preferences than evil capitalism to me.
- The argument from survivorship bias
Suppose OKCupid, being an early iteration of online dating, was an inefficient market. Whom would we expect this market inefficiency to benefit? People who are good at writing long-form engaging content for their profile of course. Who are the people currently telling you OKCupid was the greatest thing since sliced bread? Really makes you go "hmmm".
- The argument from demographics
- The argument from condensed information
Yes, age, race, culture, politics, relationship style, and desire for children are all vital filtering tools. The dirty little secret is that you can tell all of this quite reliably from only a few photographs. A picture is worth a thousand words. Photos are also harder to fake, thus making them a more credible signal of social information. If any doubt remains, it takes literally two seconds to scroll down and see her info.
- The repugnant conclusion
Far from being the cause of our modern romanceless society, Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge are simply lenses into the inherent nature of the sexual market at the margins. Those who are both in demand and willing to partner up are long since unavailable. There is no law of nature, nor any other reason to believe that every person has a "soulmate". Some people just suck.
What has changed in the modern world is the quality of single life. In the past, before internet porn, before women could reliably hold down careers, people had to pair up. It was socially demanded, it was the only way to obtain sexual gratification if you were a man, and it was the only way to provide for yourself economically if you were a woman. The positive externality of these "sad" marriages was that they generally produced children.
Quantumfreakonomics
2yr ago
I had always wondered what would happen if you hooked up 4chan boys with tumblr girls. It turns out that it creates an autism singularity with the power to destroy global financial markets. Allegedly there’s a sex tape set to be released tomorrow. A week ago I would have dismissed this as utter horseshit, but at this point I wouldn’t be surprised. We know their cybersecurity was godawful, so if a sex tape exists, it’s getting leaked.
Quantumfreakonomics
2mo ago
Assuming for a moment that the purpose of tariffs is to shift consumer spending away from foreign imports and towards domesticly manufactured products,
Shouldn't you want retailers to break-out the tariff cost into a seperate legible line item?
A story broke this morning that Amazon was going to start labeling products with the tariff charged on each item to make the price changes legible to the consumer. From the perspective of a protectionist economic policy, this is a good thing. It makes it unignorably clear which items are made in China and which items are made in America. It also shows the direct monetary incentive for you the consumer to but the Made in America item over the Made in China item.
From the perspective of whatever the hell the Trump administration is trying to do, this is a disaster. I understand that governments would prefer the populace not be particularly mindful of how much money they pay in taxes, but it is another thing alltogether to hear this articulated by the press secretary as something that they think makes the administration look good to the public. The official line from the MAGA infuencer types on Twitter is that retailers are doing this as a distraction from the fact that they sell cheap slop from Asian sweatshops, but this is actually highlighting the fact that they sell cheap slop from Asian sweatshops.
Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these,
Quantumfreakonomics
8mo ago
Mcdonalds should represent the opposite of what the right stands for. It is the antithesis of tradition, beauty, culture, small business and family.
On the contrary, McDonald’s represents the true culture of the American proletariat. You may never have worked at McDonald’s, but you know someone who worked at McDonald’s. The elitist liberal media says that McDonald’s is unhealthy slop, but deep down, you know the truth. every blue-collar worker in America has done great things fueled by a quick stop at McDonald’s.
Quantumfreakonomics
1yr ago
Presumably you've read Scott Alexander's essay on the topic (if not, you should). Internet culture was just different back then. It was taken as given that the purpose of discussion and argument was to convince people, or at least to discover the truth.
"Maybe it took about ten years from the founding of the Internet for people to really internalize that online arguments didn’t change minds. The first Internet pioneers, starting their dial-up modems and running headfirst into people outside their filter bubbles, must have been so excited. For the first time in human history, people interested in debating a subject could do so 24-7 out in a joint salon-panopticon with all of the information of the human race at their fingertips. Bible Belt churchgoers for whom atheists had been an almost-fictional bogeyman, and New York atheists who thought of the religious as unsophisticated yokels, came together for the first time thinking “Convincing these people is going to be so easy”. The decade or so before they figured out that it wasn’t was a magical time, of which the great argument-arsenals of the past are almost the only remaining monument."
This classic XKCD from 2008 captures the feeling. What made the atheism wars especially susceptible to this phenomenon is that it was not a disagreement of opinion or judgement, it was a disagreement of fact, which meant it was theoretically possible to literally prove the other side wrong. The idea, common today in the intellectual right circles that many users here frequent, that religion is important because it binds the community together, provides shared values, and gives meaning to the lives of the populace, should not be anachronistically read back into the discourse. That's just not what these controversies were about. People back then really thought that the Earth was 6000 years old, hurricanes were God's punishment for abortion, and that demon possession was a real physical occurrence. Some people still believe that, but they know better than to open their mouths about it in public now.
Quantumfreakonomics
2yr ago
I see a lot of dancing around the obvious so far.
Contrapoints, aka Natalie Wynn, is herself a trans woman, i.e. a man. She has spent a large part of her life and her entire career living/identifying/posing as a woman, despite having a Y chromosome and no uterus. When JK Rowling and her buddies over on "TERF Island" say that people with a Y chromosome and no uterus are not women and should not be treated like women, this is a personal affront. It is not taken as an invitation for an academic debate. In an academic debate, a meaningful "yes" requires the possibility of "no". For Natalie, there is no possibility of "no, trans women should not be categorized as women," because accepting that statement would jeopardize her personal identity, her relationships, her career, and her mental well-being.
Quantumfreakonomics
2yr ago
The prestige of the masters comes not from doing things that are expensive, but from doing things which require effort. When was the last time you went anywhere with a no-cellphones policy that was effectively enforced? If you are seen with a cell-phone at The Masters, you will be thrown out. While watching, you might notice the commentators' use of heightened language. This is deliberate. If you miss the fairway at Augusta, you aren't in the rough, you're in the "second cut". There will not be a single "distance to hole" infographic all weekend. The Masters might be the only organization in the Southern United States with the power to tell a major media outlet what to say on-air. That's prestige.
Quantumfreakonomics
9mo ago
When, if ever, is it appropriate to provide an apologetic defense of Nazi Germany?
Darryl Cooper, host of the widely acclaimed Martyr Made podcast, recently did a 2+ hour interview with Tucker Carlson. Darryl Cooper is known for two things. One: being meticulously empathetic with regards to the plight of the disaffected groups that are the subject of his 30-hour long history podcasts, bringing out the vivid details that form the background milieu for poorly-understood events like Jonestown. And two: his unhinged Twitter takes.
As one can imagine, jimmies were rustled. The most common line of attack was “Tucker Carlson platforms Nazi apologetics.” In a literal sense this is true. Cooper gives the German perspective on Winston Churchill. One might make the obvious point that Germany started the war by invading Poland, but the Soviet Union also invaded Poland. Yet the Western allies did not declare war on Stalin. This AskHistorians thread (no haven for Nazi apologetics!) is enlightening. What masqueraded as a mutual defense treaty was actually an anti-German treaty. Britain really was out to get them.
Once we dig deep enough, the real reason World War II started was to preserve Anglo hegemony over Europe, the exact same reason that Britain joined World War I. Post-hoc rationalizations are just that, post-hoc. It certainly isn’t irrelevant when studying World War II that the holocaust happened, but that isn’t part of the causal chain of events the way many seem to believe.
I want to emphasize that I personally like Anglo-American hegemony. Churchill’s aggressive stance towards Germany is good for me and for the vast majority of the people reading this, but in order to understand history (or current events for that matter) one has to understand the people who do not like Anglo-American hegemony. I do not know where on the doll Anglo imperialism touched him, but I do not believe that Darryl Cooper says the things that he does out of hate for his fellow man.
What did y’all think oligarchy meant? vibes? papers? essays? The doctors have this power because government gave it to them. Prescription requirements, medical certifications, doctor’s notes, these are active ingredients in the regulatory scheme. Power is delegated not to government agencies, but to medical associations. The AMA, APA, and their ilk decide what counts as a medical condition, what counts as an accepted treatment, and thus which medical procedures must be funded and never denied.
You can’t fix this without a complete overhaul of medical law. Band-aids prohibiting specific practices won’t work, as we see in the Idaho emergency abortion case.
Quantumfreakonomics
1yr ago
I can't help but chuckle to myself every time I see the phrase "medical ethics" or "bioethics". The millions of physician assisted homicides of unborn children are totally fine -- in fact, it would be unethical to withhold them -- but it is absolutely verboten to participate in the execution of convicted murderers.
I flat out do not trust them. The "medical ethics community" will complain that lethal injection procedures are potentially faulty, but they never come up with alternatives. There is absolutely no reason why it is possible to perform painless heart surgery but not painless execution. They are either lying, or they are perpetuating the unnecessary pain of inmates for political gain. I will not defer to the ethical judgements of these people.
Quantumfreakonomics
2mo ago
Now of course the explanation is obvious
You’re right. The answer is obvious.
they're doing it as a dig on trump.
No, it’s because futures exchanges are open longer hours than stock exchanges. If you want to know what the market thinks of recent news that broke while the stock market was closed, you look at the futures market.
Quantumfreakonomics
3mo ago
This really drives home why the Republican Party has been making inroads with blue-collar workers. These guys aren't acting. They talk about bombing the Middle East like it's the group-chat for subcontractors installing a new HVAC unit.
Quantumfreakonomics
7mo ago
The purpose of a system is what it does. This is related to the iron law of bureaucracy. The reason campaigns want money isn’t so that they can win elections. The reason campaigns want money is so that they can run the campaign. More money = more stuff for the people running the campaign.
As for why it seems to affect Democrats more than Republicans, guess which party has non-profit employees as a constituency.
Oxford has shut down the Future of Humanity Institute.
This was Nick Bostrom's organization within the University of Oxford for those of you wondering what on Earth the Future of Humanity Institute is. FHI has been a powerhouse on the intellectual wing of the Effective Altruism/existential risk movement. Everything in "orthodox" AI thinking that didn't come from Yudkowsky came from FHI.
What happened? Why would a premier university shut down such an influential and respected organization? The easy answer is Bostrom's N-word email from 2023, but the timeline doesn't quite line up. The final report of the institute gives their side of the story, and they paint a picture of bureaucratic strangling, leaving the reader to put the pieces together.
Obviously you don't impose a freeze on fundraising unless you want the organization to die. Funding was not the issue.
Translation: They hated us, they hated our ideas, and they hated our autism.
As stated before, this is FHI's accounting of the events, but they sure seem upset.
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