Quantumfreakonomics
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User ID: 324
Quantumfreakonomics
3mo ago
The rant from "A Few Good Men", presented without comment.
Quantumfreakonomics
3mo ago
My first thought when I saw that was, “wouldn’t the higher-agency thing be not forgetting your scarf in a hotel room in the first place?” My brain couldn’t comprehend the concept of portraying dishonesty like this as a positive attribute.
What if there was no scarf? What if the cleaning lady was already on thin ice and then had to answer for allegedly stealing a scarf?
Quantumfreakonomics
3mo ago
This isn't a real schedule. This is an artifact of legal and bureaucratic processes. Some polity passes a law that says, "Entity X must formulate and implement a plan to do Y." Entity X doesn't actually want to do Y for whatever reason (usually political opposition, but not nessesarily). The thing that Entity X always does in this situation is spend their time coming up with insane plans that will take forever and hope that they will never be implemented. The endgame is to abruptly cancel the project years later and hope nobody notices. Radioactive waste disposal projects are the poster boy of this phenomenon. Yucca Mountain was abruptly cancelled for no reason as soon as the planning was done, $10 billion over decades for absolutely nothing.
Quantumfreakonomics
3mo ago
It's their position that Article 3 and the Judiciary Act of 1789 do not give courts the power to issue nationwide injunctions
From a strict textualist point of view I think this is defensible. The judicial power extends only to “cases and controversies”. There is an implication that any action which contradicts binding judicial precedent is illegal, but technically this is only an implication. The judicial branch doesn’t have authority over an action until it becomes the subject of a case or controversy, i.e. when a specific plaintiff sues over a specific action.
Practically, this creates some hurdles and perverse incentives, so I doubt the court will go for it.
Quantumfreakonomics
3mo ago
This is just how institutional Christianity talks nowadays. When Pope Francis changed the catechism to be against capital punishment, he didn’t say, “executions are a sin,” he said, “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.”
Actually, I think the nuance is lost. Social justice warriors weren’t simply inspired by Christianity. They don’t have similarities by coincidence. They are a direct evolutionary branch of mainline Protestantism. There is path dependency.
Quantumfreakonomics
3mo ago
A lot of people wonder why Curtis Yarvin is taken seriously. There’s been a lot of drama lately about whether Moldbug Sold Out, or whether there is any reason to take him seriously. A lot of this comes from an overfocusing on his monarchy prescriptions, but this really misses a lot of the deeper intellectual content. Social justice came from American Mainline Protestantism. They are the same thing.
Quantumfreakonomics
3mo ago
A surprisingly large percentage of the population lives within shouting distance of an elementary school. Is the Catholic Church supposed to lock people in jail?
Quantumfreakonomics
3mo ago
Prevost is believed to have shared Francis' views on migrants, the poor and the environment
Real snoozefest issues in this profile. I want to know if he has ever celebrated mass ad orientem. How does he feel about Latin and gregorian chant?
Quantumfreakonomics
3mo ago
Big W for the iron law of bureaucracy. Nobody outside the clergy had ever heard of this guy, but he was in charge of the diacastry for bishops, basically the church’s HR department.
Quantumfreakonomics
3mo ago
Now thats an interpretation I've never heard before.
This would be a cool loophole if the text said, "this generation will not pass away until all these things are seen," but it actually says, "this generation will not pass away until all these things take place," which I don't think can be said to apply to a vision or other non-physical manifestations of the events in question.
Quantumfreakonomics
3mo ago
My point is a bit more subtle than that. Universi Dominici Gregis is not a restriction on the pope's creation of cardinals. It is a restriction on how the conclave is to operate. I think your argument is that the pope's creation of more than 120 cardinals under the age of 80 in and of itself changes the law about how the conclave is to operate. This seems like an argument from, "it would really suck if that were true." Yeah, it would suck if Francis put the church in a position where we couldn't elect a pope until 13 otherwise eligible cardinals voluntarily agreed to give up their right to vote, but that is the best reading of the current law (in my opinion). It would be much easier to proceed as if Francis changed the law to let the maximum number of Cardinal electors exceed 120, but anyone reading the rules without the preexisting comittment of fidelity to the church can see that they're making it up as they go along.
Quantumfreakonomics
3mo ago
That at least one person who is alive at the time Jesus made that statement will still be alive when the second coming happens.
Quantumfreakonomics
3mo ago
"Cardinal" and "cardinal elector" are two distinct concepts. Having more than 120 cardinals in existance does not violate the document. Having more than 120 cardinals vote in a conclave does.
Regarding preterism, from Matthew 24:
29 Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: 30 And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. 31 And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.
This flat out didn't happen in history. And before you say that this is all supposed to be allegorical, 1 Thessalonians 4:
15 For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. 16 For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: 17 Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.
Paul sure seems to think that Christ coming in the clouds from heaven means the ressurection of the body.
Quantumfreakonomics
3mo ago
Okay, I listened to the podcast. These guys are just wrong.
You're right that the rule can be changed at any time by the pope, except that the pope didn't actually change it. The 120 cardinal electors rule remains in place. The error that the podcast guys make is that they assume that the pope appoints "cardinal electors", but the pope doesn't appoint "cardinal electors", the pope appoints cardinals. "Cardinal elector" is not an office, it is simply a description of a cardinal who votes in the conclave. The rules for which cardinals get to be cardinal electors comes from the document Universi Dominici Gregis. Universi Dominici Gregis contains both the proposition that cardinals under the age of 80 have the right to vote, and the proposition that the maximum number of cardinal electors is 120.
"33. The right to elect the Roman Pontiff belongs exclusively to the Cardinals of Holy Roman Church, with the exception of those who have reached their eightieth birthday before the day of the Roman Pontiff's death or the day when the Apostolic See becomes vacant. The maximum number of Cardinal electors must not exceed one hundred and twenty."
As far as I can tell, the pope never decided which proposition controls. If he did, please cite it to me. Both propositions are from the same document and of equal weight.
Quantumfreakonomics
3mo ago
In preparation for the currently ongoing papal conclave, I decided to read the official rules currently in force, UNIVERSI DOMINICI GREGIS, issued by John Paul II in 1996. The document contains this provision (emphasis added):
”In the present historical circumstances, the universality of the Church is sufficiently expressed by the College of one hundred and twenty electors, made up of Cardinals coming from all parts of the world and from very different cultures. I therefore confirm that this is to be the maximum number of Cardinal electors”
Seems simple enough right?
”On Wednesday afternoon, under the gaze of Michelangelo’s frescoes, the 133 cardinals taking part in the 2025 conclave entered the Sistine Chapel.”
Here I was, a schmuck, reading the canonically promulgated apostolic constitution as if it mattered, as if the supposed men of God involved in this 2000-year-old institution might care about established procedures.
Sure, Francis could have changed the rules, as many popes have done throughout the centuries, but he didn’t. He either didn’t notice or didn’t care, and neither did anyone else with influence within the Vatican either. How am I supposed to take this seriously if the cardinals and popes don’t even take it seriously?
I wish Christianity were true. I really do. It would certainly make my dating life easier. I’d have a sense of purpose in life, defined rules of virtue to follow, but it just doesn’t make any actual sense. The inconsistency I cited above is relatively minor, but it is illustrative of what one finds everywhere when one digs into the claims of Christianity and treats them with the truth-preserving tools of logic. Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus and Vatican II, Matthew 24:34, these are fundamental truth claims that can’t be handwaved away like the finer points of ecclesiastical law.
Quantumfreakonomics
3mo ago
Lots of so-called “confidential” processes are very much not confidential or anonymous once you dig into the fine print. Never tell your psychiatrist that you’ve had suicidal thoughts unless you want to be committed.
Quantumfreakonomics
3mo ago
It is socially acceptable to ask girls to dance at a school dance, but boys don’t want to dance. They want to fuck (or get married if you’re feeling charitable). The discourse is unproductive because they have abstracted away the thing that everyone knows young boys want.
Quantumfreakonomics
3mo ago
I'm thinking about trimming my equity exposure as well. I can't in good concience reccomend liquidating everything. Can you imagine missing the "AGI has been achieved internally (but for real this time)" rally?
Quantumfreakonomics
3mo ago
The wire fraud statute is pretty broad and seems like it would cover this kind of thing.
Quantumfreakonomics
3mo ago
The other possibility that I haven’t seen brought up is that Elon uses X payouts as a giant dial to control how much money he spends on political influence. Elon has partially given up on DOGE, so he doesn’t need as much political cover.
Quantumfreakonomics
3mo ago
I mostly chalk that up to being the pragmatic solution to Venezuela refusing to accept their people back.
I've heard conflicting reports on this. From this article it sounds like there was a brief window wherein Venezuela wasn't accepting deportees, and this was when the El Salvador deportations happened.
Quantumfreakonomics
3mo ago
(apparently nationwide starting in 2017 after a SCOTUS decision)
Huh, you’re right. Somehow I never noticed this.
Quantumfreakonomics
3mo ago
I don't think Amazon is angry at Trump. I think Amazon is angry at tariffs for the exact same reason that consumers are angry at tariffs. They aren't using this as some proxy conflict to get back at MAGA. They want to cut costs and lower prices.
The "walls guarded by men with guns" in the clip relates to the wall (well, barricaded door) guarded by a man with a gun in the footage of the shooting.
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