Quantumfreakonomics
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User ID: 324
Quantumfreakonomics
1yr ago
...are you really complaining that they didn't write out and evaluate the surface integral over the daylit hemisphere ∫∫S Isuncos θincidencedS? I assure you that it simplifies to Isunπr²
In the physical world no externally heated substance can raise the temperature of its heat-source.
I assume you are referring to the second law of thermodynamics? The greenhouse effect doesn't violate the second law. The net heat flow is still surface>atmosphere>space. The fact that infrared-absorbing gasses reflect some of this heat back to the surface would not cause the surface to "heat up" in the absence of external solar radiation. The net effect is to slow down the rate of energy emission from the surface out into space. Net heat flows from hot to cold in every step.
Quantumfreakonomics
1yr ago
No, it’s just going to pretend to not know those things. The optimal “woke” AI is a correct-Bayesian-reasoning engine with an output filter that toggles on or off if it expects meaningful human resistance.
Quantumfreakonomics
3mo ago
Robin Hanson on healthcare:
Education is the same way. The more human time and attention is dedicated to education (i.e. how much it costs), the more you signal that you care about educating children. The thing has been replaced by the symbolic representation of the thing. We would be in much less of a student debt crisis if middle-class women didn't have to get (subsidized) 4-year degrees in order to get childcare jobs at the government-run daycare.
If you had been keeping up with the dating discussions on here, ACX, and /r/slatestarcodex, you would have known this is false from signaling economics.
If there were any possible string of text characters one could put in one's profile to increase one's match rate this much, then dudes would be doing exactly that. Getting the date, hoping to click, and then hoping she becomes attached and doesn't care that you're not rich is a much better strategy than getting zero dates. Perhaps you have ethical hangups that would prevent you from doing this (as do I), but there are plenty of desperate or overly horny guys out there who would be willing to do this.
Of course, women are agents, and thus would change their behavior after getting ripped off constantly. Most likely by disregarding text on male dating profiles without a credible signal to back it up.
EDIT: Actually, a much simpler way would be by looking at his baseline Hinge matches. I've never used Hinge, but if it's anything like Tinder and Bumble, 20 matches a month for someone overweight, not particularly handsome, and 5'9" is almost an order of magnitude higher than what I would find likely.
Quantumfreakonomics
10mo ago
Was it ever really a “team” though? A browse through Wikipedia makes it sound like Fivethirtyeight was Nate’s personal blog at first. It was only after he signed with the New York Times that “writers” started showing up. It was comical just how uninterested Nate seemed in the partisan hackery, even when it constituted the bulk of “his” website.
Quantumfreakonomics
1yr ago
A strong president wouldn't have been 'monitoring the situation' as his supporters were swept out of twitter and reddit, he would've forced the social media companies to back down.
Actually yeah, what the fuck. The largest pro-trump community on the internet was completely wiped out before the 2020 election, and we didn't even get an angerly-worded speech about it. It wasn't on Fox News so he didn't give a shit.
Quantumfreakonomics
1yr ago
Did Google not release anything for ethical reasons, or was it because they were a bunch of naval-gazers with the economic discipline of a DMV office?
Quantumfreakonomics
1yr ago
A long time ago I would have agreed with you, but it’s shocking how much the quality of this place improved once the mods brought the full banhammer on JB and his alts.
Quantumfreakonomics
1yr ago
As someone who’s favorite movie as a teenager was The Dark Knight, let me tell you, SBF is living the dream. He’s LARPing as a cross between Two-Face and the Joker with plot armor, right down to the insane attracted-to-power on/off accomplice gf. This dude is going around spinning crazy utilitarian ethical dilemmas, releasing cryptic messages to a global audience, and inexplicably raising large amounts of capital. This is what agency looks like folks. A civilization without unaccountable, unregulated, international crypto empires can never have citizens who are truly free.
Quantumfreakonomics
1mo ago
The death toll seems to have come to a grand total of zero.
This isn't war, this is kayfabe. An event for the sake of having an event. Is the Iranian military truly this incompetent? They could do better than this if they really wanted to cause damage. It feels like the purpose was domestic propaganda. All regimes need some level of popular legitimacy. "We are the only state willing to open fire on the Zionist dogs," is good for Iranian prestige in the region.
Quantumfreakonomics
2mo ago
Apart from the direct culture-war implications, it is interesting to me how much the Google engineers obviously don't want to ship anything. This feels like a "blink twice if you need help" moment, like they got the call from corporate that they need to take whatever they have and ship, so they slapped the laziest content filter possible.
Quantumfreakonomics
7mo ago
What happens if the new state keeps shooting rockets at Israel and periodically sends death squads into Israeli territory to kill as many people as possible?
Quantumfreakonomics
8mo ago
Holocaust denial is a factually incorrect position to take
Well, how do you know that? Presumably you weren't there. Did you see it? Did you go into the lab in history class and measure it? Did you receive a vision from God whereby you were commanded to write seven comments to the seven forums of rationalism? No, you believe the Holocaust because you read about it or watched some YouTube videos (I hope you aren't relying on personal instruction from public schoolteachers for your epistemology). Why do you believe those sources? Was it eyewitness testimony from someone claiming to be a Holocaust survivor? You can watch interviews with people claiming to be abducted by aliens. Did they cite documents from the time period? Documents can be forged, important documents, documents which change the course of history because people believe them.
The reason I believe the Holocaust is because of bounded distrust. There are enough eyewitness accounts that make sense considered together, enough plausible-seeming documents that match up with everything else we know well enough, and perhaps most importantly, there is a small army of people dedicated to poking holes in all of this who have come up mostly empty. They are the mechanism by which distrust is bounded. It is vital for a healthy information ecosystem that people be allowed to question everything.
Quantumfreakonomics
8mo ago
I could sit here and list practical reasons why these so-called "gangster methods" are preferable to banana republic show-trials, but I want to emphasize something else. They're just cooler.
Ethical concerns aside, it's hard to overstate just how badass the polonium-210 poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko was. Russian informant and known enemy of Vladimir Putin shows up at a London hospital with strange symptoms. Doctors can't figure out what's wrong. Radiation poisoning is suspected, but Geiger counter readings are negative. It takes military-grade equipment to detect radiation in his blood samples. Unlike almost all other radiation sources, samples of polonium-210 only emit alpha radiation. Alpha particles can't penatrate skin and can barely penetrate air. That's why the Geiger counter couldn't detect anything, but when emitted from inside the body, alpha radiation causes massive DNA damage. He never had a chance.
Quantumfreakonomics
9mo ago
Not every pro-lifer is religious, but the anti-abortion movement is fundamentally a religious movement. If you analyze it the same way you analyze the Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street, or Black Lives Matter, you will see bizarre and inexplicable results.
Every year, the annual March for Life draws tens to hundreds of thousands of people to Washington DC. Nobody cares. Why do they do it? Has one single person ever waked by and thought, "Wow, those people sure do have an opinion. Maybe I should vote Republican?" The elements that we now know make protest effective (media support, implied threats, elite backing) are wholly absent.
The audience isn't you. The audience isn't voters or politicians. The audience is God.
There were not ten righteous men in Sodom. If you were Abraham, and you had until election day to save Sodom from fire and brimstone, what would you do? Would you consult with leading Sodomite political theorists? Run cuneiform ads on clay tablets? Your best bet would be to do whatever you think God wants and hope you earn enough grace points to bail your friends out of trouble. If you were a kid going to Jesus Camp in the 90s and 2000s, then Donald Trump getting 3 Supreme Court Justices and overturning Roe v Wade looks like divine intervention. Obviously God wants you to close the deal right? Sure it will take a few more miracles, but if God can save Nineveh he can save America.
Quantumfreakonomics
11mo ago
Breaking Down the Trump Indictment.
Here is the charging document. It's filed in the Southern District of Florida, which could become important for jury selection reasons. The core of the case is the allegation that Trump instructed his personal assistant to move boxes containing classified documents in order to hide them from his attorneys and the grand jury.
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In January 2021, while he was still president, Trump and his "body man" Waltine Nauta moved dozens of boxes containing records and documents (presumably including the classified documents at issue in this case) from The White House to Mar-a-Lago.
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On two separate occasions in 2021, Trump referred to and displayed classified documents during conversations with individuals who had no security clearance or need-to-know. Trump mentioned in these conversations that he had not declassified the information and that he shouldn't be showing it to anyone.
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In May 2021, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) told Trump to turn over presidential records that he kept after his presidency.
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In January 2022, Nauta, on behalf of Trump, turned over some (but not all) of the boxes to NARA.
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The boxes turned over to NARA contained 197 classified documents, prompting a Department of Justice criminal grand jury investigation.
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On May 11, 2022, the grand jury issued a subpoena ordering Trump to turn over all classified documents in his possession, custody, or control.
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In the following weeks, Nauta is seen on security footage moving 64 boxes from the Mar-a-Lago storage room and bringing them to Trump's residence, and moving only 30 boxes from Trump's residence back to the storage room.
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Trump also makes numerous suggestive and mafioso-esque statements to his lawyers about how great it would be if there were no documents and praising Hillary Clinton's lawyer for deleting 30,000 of her emails.
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On June 2, 2022, 'Trump attorney 1' visited the Mar-a-Lago storage room and searched through the boxes there for classified documents to comply with the subpoena. He finds 38 classified documents. Only the boxes in the storage room were searched. He then asked 'Trump attorney 3', who did not take part in the search for documents, to sign the certificate of compliance with the subpoena and turn over the 38 documents.
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In July 2022, the grand jury obtained the surveillance footage of Nauta moving boxes mentioned above, prompting the court to issue a search warrant authorizing the FBI to seize all classified documents from Mar-a-Lago.
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On August 8, 2022, the FBI executes the search warrant. 75 classified documents were found in the storage room, and 27 classified documents were found in Trump's office.
What is quite interesting here is that attorney-client privilege between Trump and 'Trump attorney 1' was pierced under the "crime-fraud exception". The theory is that because Trump misled 'Trump attorney 1' as to the location of the documents in order to violate the subpoena, that means his legal services were "rendered in the commission of a crime," and therefore not protected by privilege. I am curious if any of our resident lawyers can weigh in on if this meets the typical threshold, because it seems like a bit of a stretch to me.
Trump also lost the two lawyers who were representing him immediately after the indictment was unsealed. It's not clear if they quit or if they were fired. Its amazing how fast the guy burns through lawyers. It seems like half of them end up with their career in ruins too. I can't tell if Trump is a nightmare client, or if the powers that be are targeting his legal representation in order to leave him stuck with bottom-of-the-barrel attorney's to defend against federal charges.
Quantumfreakonomics
11mo ago
At first I was going to say that this is simply a prominent example of emotivism, but really it’s not even that. The “hurrah trans kids” isn’t disguised as a proposition, it’s disguised as a command. “Protect trans kids”, is an imperative sentence, exactly the same as, “Workers of the World Unite.” It’s the Greengrocer’s Sign. What it means is, "I, the movie studio Sony Pictures work here and I know what I must do. I behave in the manner expected of me. I can be depended upon and am beyond reproach. I am obedient and therefore I have the right to be left in peace."
Quantumfreakonomics
1yr ago
I hear there’s this Paul guy going around telling people they don’t have to follow the Torah. He never even met Jesus.
Quantumfreakonomics
1yr ago
Am I being too utopian in wishing for a world where "I'm not interested in the 'with benefits' part, but sure! let's be friends! I'd love to hang out with you and go to a movie or have lunch together at times!" is acceptable for both parties? That men and women really could be friends, even if the possibility of sex is not on the table? That the guy won't disappear if there isn't the chance of getting laid so all the stuff about "I like you, let's be friends" is bullshit, and the woman isn't perceived as "I want a beta orbiter" if she just wants to go to movies and out for meals with the guy?
Essentially yes? One could construct hypothetical scenarios where both parties are romantically and sexually satisfied, and neither one would prefer the other over their current partner, and each one's partner does not feel threatened by the friendship. In such a situation I think what you propose would work.
In general, I think men understand if a woman is taken and doesn't want to change partners. We get it. We can't all be the most desirable man in the world.
What I don't think women understand is how [disrespectful? infuriating? emasculating? I'm not sure the exact word to use here] it feels when a woman, who is single, tells you that even though she finds you funny, and interesting, and likes being around you, she doesn't want to do anything romantic or sexual with you. It makes it obvious that her revealed preference, despite having deep-seated biological drives to be romantic and have sex, is to refrain from that activity entirely rather than have it with you. I don't want to use the term "dehumanizing", both because it's overused, and because it doesn't quite apply here either, but there is no word for what it feels like to be presented with empirical evidence that the very thing that makes you who you are, your genetics themselves (not your personality or sense of humor, we know she likes that), have been soundly rejected, that there are subconscious signals you could never understand radiating off of you demonstrating your lack of worth to exactly the people you want to impress. You will be reminded of this fact every time you hang out with her, that you could be having much more fun, getting exactly what you've always wanted, if only you weren't made of objectively low-quality genetics.
That is why, in general, men and women can't be "just friends".
Quantumfreakonomics
1yr ago
This reads to me more like a story of Islam liberalizing than one of academic freedom. Freaking out over pictures of Muhammad isn't cool, makes Muslims look bad, and isn't what Islam is about. I can't help but notice the low-class, unsophisticated Somalis of the Minnesota chapter getting put in their place by the high-status, cosmopolitan Arab Muslims of the national CAIR.
Quantumfreakonomics
8mo ago
Is this how the single-issue posting rule is going to be applied? I see multiple comments on non-dating subjects in /u/SkookumTree‘s first two pages of comments.
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
1yr ago
The problem with Reddit's business model is that it relies on massive amounts of volunteer labor (subreddit moderators). Moderators are unpaid, so these positions will be filled by people who value power and status over money, i.e. progressive activists.
In theory, this is solved by people who don't like the mods of one subreddit making their own subreddit with their own mods. In practice, mods of the largest subreddits, being progressive activists, will demand that site ownership take down dissenting subreddits. Site ownership can't afford to piss off the moderator class too much, because then they lose their massive source of unpaid labor, as very nearly happened before. This inevitably degenerates into the situation we find ourselves in now, where major subreddits simply lock any potentially controversial thread and ban anyone who complains about it.
Man, I can't get over the fact that The Department of Justice Education is investigating middle school bullying. Like, it's middle school dude. What did you expect? I'm sure if you put everything that happened to me in middle school into an adversarial legal brief it would look pretty bad too.
Let me explain the problem: Every single child in the public school system has to learn every single social rule at some point. Some will learn simply by being told, but not every rule is or could be expressed in words. Some will learn from the mistakes of their classmates. Some further will have to make the mistakes themselves. A number of these mistakes are, or must result in, bullying. Middle school is when puberty starts, and thus is where many of the most salacious rules must be learned -- learned the hard way if necessary. You can't take the bullying out of middle school and have it still be middle school.
You should not be surprised. This is a very simple logical syllogism that follows from two premises believed by almost all democrat politicians.
Children who run away from home because their parents refuse them medically necessary health care should not be returned to their parents because it is unsafe.
Gender affirming care for transgender children is medically necessary.
Therefore, transgender children who run away from home because their parents refuse them gender affirming care should not be returned to their parents because it is unsafe.
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