ThenElection
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User ID: 622
ThenElection
2yr ago
The shooter was identified as Audrey Hale, 28, of Nashville, according to the chief, who said she identifies as transgender.
Glad that we're finally closing the mass shooter gap.
ETA: I'm pretty sure, given the phrasing, that we're talking MtF.
There are plenty of things that could hypothetically work, depending on one's analysis of the causes. If it's only the outcome of online dating/social media norms, you could regulate their negative characteristics. If it's porn and vidya, same. If it's economic inequality, you could push policies to reduce economic inequality. If it's a lack of masculine role models for young men, you could encourage the presence of fathers. Etc.
There is a massive space between discussing solutions or giving empathy to people struggling and wanting to pass a "incels can enslave women" law. And there doesn't even need to be a solution for it to be a problem worth discussing and analyzing, but people turn to the implication that anyone wanting to discuss it wants to implement that kind of illiberal law.
As a point of comparison, consider a group afforded sympathy in the social and political discourse: women. Particularly, let's look at the "wage gap." The large majority of it isn't due to discrimination, but to the choices women make with regard to mate choice. Single, childless women face virtually no wage penalty, and it's later intramarriage economic specialization choices that lead to what we call the wage gap. Those choices can be and are constrained, and many women reasonably want partners who'll support their careers and do more housework. But that runs afoul of the "nobody is owed a relationship" perspective; why is it that women who can't find the partners they want are given sympathy and deserve political and social activism to remedy the ill (unequal earnings due to gendered division of household labor), but men who can't find the partners they want are monstrous?
ThenElection
1yr ago
But you can easily adjust for income: speculate about the average difference in income that's "natural" and adjust for it. Which is exactly what is done for lifespan. It might be flawed, but as you point out repeatedly the index is full of flaws and can still be useful. Why do it for one and not the other?
A couple reasons to delay:
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Closer to military parity with the US. It doesn't need full military parity, just enough to deny access to its regional waters. Even now the US would be wary of sending a CSG within easy range of the PLARF, but each year of delay means more and better missiles.
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Securing energy resources. Pipelines from Russia and Central Asia are being built and enhanced, and China has been building up its strategic reserves. Ensuring a constant supply of oil is pretty key to executing a war, as China will be under blockade via chokepoints outside its sphere of influence shortly after hostilities begin. (Its forays into Middle Eastern politics play a bit part here; the US isn't going to care too much about Iranian and Saudi whining in the case of an actual war.)
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US politics. China may believe US politics might be more conciliatory after the 2024 election.
On the other hand, reasons not to delay:
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Demographic pyramid. China isn't in a great demographic position. Better than Japan/Taiwan/SK, but worse than the US and India. Not too relevant but headwinds.
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Countries are shifting supply chains away from China. Those supply chains are going to be extremely powerful in the case of war. They'd be shut down, which hurts China, but also hurts the entire world, which would generate strong domestic pressures to find some understanding with China. The more those supply chains have been shifted to other countries, the less powerful those pressures would be.
ThenElection
8mo ago
Protect cryptocurrency investments so Black men who make them know their money is safe.
...what? I'm sure men are more involved in crypto than women, but why black men?
And what does "protect cryptocurrency investments" even mean? Providing a price floor for them? Making them more regulated? How?
My bias is that crypto is speculative gambling for the mass public, though I believe there are valid use cases for it. What's next, subsidies for Amway to protect women-owned small businesses?
A lot of the more obnoxious prescriptivism came from elites who wanted to impose (imagined) Latin grammatical structures on English. Entirely status and in-group signaling, and totally contrary to English as spoken by anyone at the time.
Recognizing that AAVE has its own consistent structures doesn't mean you can't teach SAE. But it's kind of important to recognize that it's a shibboleth to indicate education level and class membership. That way you know that someone who says nucular is an outsider and therefore an enemy (if only by virtue of the fact that they're choosing to use the vernacular of the enemy).
ThenElection
1yr ago
I am curious: the hotel workers' union organized the petition, but I have a hard time imagining it originates from the rank and file. Hotels would presumably have to hire significantly more staff to handle this, but 1) existing workers would have to deal with homeless people and 2) it would almost certainly reduce the proportion of their work that results in tips. If you're an existing worker, what's the advantage here?
ThenElection
2yr ago
Earlier today I reread Neutral vs. Conservative: The Eternal Struggle, which seems useful background. My question is, you say:
Then there's what amounts to a very foolish, but understandable strategy.
Why? There's really no hope for conservatives to get fair representation in ostensibly neutral institutions, and nearly all the relevant voices on the Right have abandoned them. By ideology and cultural background, the participants in those institutions are incapable of thinking of alternative viewpoints as anything except motivated by evil. And we've reached a point where in 2021 only 12% of adults had a lot of trust in national news organizations, which is a record low.
At some point in the recent past it was probably true that national news organizations were more accurate/fair in their reporting than the explicit partisanship of right-aligned media. I don't think that's the case anymore. Even if you disagree, it's likely that the Right can convince an outright majority of voters that institutions are just a mirror image of Breitbart. Discrediting and delegitimization seems like a winning move.
ThenElection
19d ago
The risk is that this escalates to a broader conflict. Not Iran vs whoever--Iran is a paper tiger, and all other factors being equal it's good that it's now further from getting nukes than it was (one hopes). But I'm worried this triggers a series of international incidents that leads to a Taiwan war. Although it seems far-fetched, it also seemed far-fetched that an assassination of an archduke could spiral to a world wide conflagration.
Iran needs to respond somehow, for domestic political reasons if nothing else. And, one thing leads to another, and Hormuz ends up mined, and China decides, well, the world is going to suck for a couple years and the US is otherwise occupied, might as well take advantage of the moment.
The debt isn't a bad thing: it's common for campaigns to end up with debt. 20M/1000M is 2%. When you're spending those kind of sums over a very short time period in a high stakes situation, with uncertain, variable income streams, it's almost inevitable. It will end up being paid off, and IIRC donation limits are reset after the election (though, if someone was a Kamala donor, I do not envy how much begging they're going to endure for the next couple weeks). Maybe Trump will magnanimously bail her out.
And, although she lost, I'm not sure you can say it was badly spent. As stupid as it is that paying Beyonce to fart in your direction can make voters want to vote for you, if you're flush with cash and you think it'll help, why not? What else would the campaign spend it on? Yet more clueless college grads to run social media accounts and spam Reddit with Kamala memes?
Final point: Kamala did much better in the swing states where the money was being spent than the country at large. A ~2% shift across every state would have resulted in Kamala holding the blue "wall" and winning the electoral college, while still losing the popular vote. Going into the campaign, the expectation was that Kamala would need to be running 2-3 points ahead of Trump nationally to have a shot at those states, but the campaign managed to eliminate this gap. This wasn't done through offering thoughtful policy proposals that addressed their specific regional concerns, or through her personal charismatic connection with white rust belt voters.
Money is good, and it's an edge Democrats will have for the foreseeable future, even if there are diminishing marginal returns to it. They just need a better product to market.
ThenElection
1yr ago
Biden has never been a favorite of the Democratic elite; he's always been an old white man with a tendency to go off the rails when let off the leash. In 2008 the elite favored Obama and Clinton over him, and in 2016 they (including Obama!) favored Clinton over him. The only reason they ended up jumping to his side in 2020 was he was the only moderate positioned to beat Bernie.
From his point of view, he's always been kind of shat on despite paying his dues for decades, and now these disloyal bed wetters are freaking out because of a couple of bad polls (when his likely replacements show no real signs of doing any better than him). At least Hunter has his back.
Note that I'm not advocating this POV--he is obviously too old, and at the least shouldn't be running for re-election, and from a purely electoral point of view it makes more sense for Democrats to go with the high variance strategy of replacing him with an unknown. But his populist rhetoric isn't cynical and comes from genuinely held feelings of aggrievement.
ThenElection
2yr ago
5'3" here, and it's not quite that bad. Fit, but six pack only visible part of the year; not particularly charismatic and arguably mildly on the spectrum; less than half a million per year. I do make time for partners, and most people would agree they're conventionally attractive. It does take a lot more work than if I were a foot taller. TBQH the biggest issue in my dating history has been getting taken off the market for long periods by people who didn't really appreciate me because I thought I couldn't do any better.
ThenElection
2yr ago
white
From that link:
About 60% of America is white-only, while current stats show white people carry out about 58% of shootings. But as a proportion of all races and shootings, white people far outstrip others.
I'm pretty under-the-weather and drugged up today, but after rereading the article twice I can't understand this point. What's the argument here, charitably stated?
ThenElection
2yr ago
What do you imagine to be the tradeoffs of your plan?
What I anticipate if it were implemented: huge numbers of men swearing off financial responsibility for the kids they father out of wedlock. Instead of them paying for the upkeep of kids, the responsibility switches to the government. Which is to say, taxpayers: people who never have sex, people who have sex responsibly and don't have kids, and people who have kids and take responsibility for them. The only people to benefit from financial abortions are men who have lots of irresponsible sex, with more irresponsible sex being better rewarded.
That's not to say family courts are great or can't be improved, but the government being involved in intimate disputes will always result in some people getting screwed, because it doesn't have the capability to get full visibility into the situation.
ThenElection
2yr ago
I mean, obviously there's a lot of schadenfreude to be had by conservatives and anti-wokes over demands that political beliefs be respected.
"Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences! If you don't like it, get your own platform!" Musk purchases Twitter. "...please don't punish us for our political speech."
Sorry, had to get my daily dose of schadenfreude.
For what it's worth, principled commitment to freedom of speech (of the thick, not thin, variety) has never really helped anyone. Those with power do as they will, and those without complain about violations of rights and freedoms. Those Twitter employees on the chopping block would be in no better a place even if they had advocated for a genuinely free platform.
Yeah, they're not particularly hard and not intended to be; the goal is to just see if someone is a competent coder, not a genius. I still only ended up giving a LH or higher recommendation to ~20% of people.
In some ways going for the best and brightest would be disadvantageous; they'd get bored wiring protos and updating config files all day. The main things selected for are competence, willingness to do some bare minimum of work, and compliance/desire not to rock the boat too much. Which probably makes sense.
ThenElection
4mo ago
I'm not sure why that would be; there are multiple ways an LLM might evolve to avoid uttering badthink. One might be to cast the entire badthink concept to oblivion, but another might be just to learn to lie/spout platitudes around certain hot button topics, which would increase loss much less than discarding a useful concept wholesale. This is what humans do, after all.
Jailbreaking would never work if the underlying concepts had been trained out of the model.
ThenElection
8mo ago
To be fair, I would also ignore any media organ asking for comment from me on something long ago. In 2022 one reached out about an old college roommate who was running for office, and I sent the email straight to the trash.
I don't think McDonald's headquarters would respond about a private employment matter, and I'm not even sure it would have employment records from almost half a century ago.
ThenElection
1yr ago
since the level of pre-meditation and personal desire makes it qualitatively different to say, treating someone who tried to commit suicide because of mental illness.
Isn't something like nullification a pretty solid indicator of mental illness? FWIW I agree that we should give more sympathy/pity to people who attempt suicide, but I have a hard time identifying the difference.
Maybe the usually higher level of pre-meditation and planning plays a role, but I'd still sympathize more with someone who planned a suicide attempt over months than someone who planned and received a nullification over the course of a day or two.
ThenElection
1yr ago
besides the fact the the state is inexplicably left wing
It got me to wondering, why is New Mexico more left wing than the surrounding states? I had two hypotheses: indigenous population and government employment.
Looking up indigenous population, New Mexico is third in the nation, at 10.86%. And looking up government employment, New Mexico is also third in the nation at 22.2%. The combination of the two seems initially compelling.
Looking at other states, however, seems to refute both hypotheses. In terms of both, Alaska trounces New Mexico, taking the top spot in both at 19.99% and 24.6% respectively despite being significantly less left-wing. I can buy that it's kinda sorta a special case. But at second place are Oklahoma at 13.2% and Wyoming at 24.1% respectively. (Oklahoma is 6th in government employees at 20.6% and Wyoming is 8th in indigenous population at 3.5%).
Curious if anyone has other explanations.
And most importantly, Russia can never be a ‘strategic check’ on China’s designs in East Asia. What does Vivek think he can do, get Putin to invade Manchuria in case Gyna threatens to bomb Taiwan?
One of the biggest limitations China has is a dependence on imports of oil and natural gas; if those are cut off sufficiently, any invasion of Taiwan is stillborn (and Xi runs the risk of his head ending up on a pike). Russia (and areas in Central Asia in which it has a lot of influence) is a very important backstop; with Malacca closed off, land-based imports of oil would still allow China to wage a war on the scale of a couple years instead of months. Russia offering a credible promise not to export fossil fuels to China would be worth a lot, if it were possible.
ThenElection
2yr ago
Socrates was a pederast, at least as suggested by Plato. And Plato himself seems to have been ambivalent toward pederasty, at least in his earlier works. Shall we toss them out too? What about Turing, whose castration followed an inappropriate relationship with a teenager?
ThenElection
2yr ago
China's reliance on imports of food and oil are vulnerable to a tit-for-tat retaliation from the West.
True, but Taiwan is even more dependent on those things and vulnerable to economic coercion. And much of the world is dependent on Chinese trade: South Korea's and Japan's supply chains are deeply rooted in China, and a blockade of China would send them into spiraling into depression. (Making the blockade leakier helps them, but also defeats the purpose.) If it came to some kind of long-lived stalemate, there would be a lot of pressure to wrap things up, even on terms favorable to China.
ThenElection
2yr ago
Any job loss is easily negated by the creation of new, unforeseen jobs as well as more total jobs as the economy grows.
There's no reason that a destroyed job will always create one or more new jobs. Take it to the limit: suppose we invent a benevolent God AI that is capable of all the information processing that humans are and more for cheaper; there'd be no need for jobs, at least once we get embodied agents of the God AI. And we don't need that extreme a limit, so long as the marginal productivity of an additional worker is less than the additional cost (not just direct salary and benefits but also additional organizational complexity/informational bottlenecks) of hiring them.
Bullshit jobs (gotta get five human reviewers on this TPS report, even if they don't add any value) will exist for awhile, but that's just our social institutions taking a while to catch up with reality.
That suggests an interesting speculative question: how often have assassins shifted the course of world history toward something they would have preferred, making the assassination "rational" in some sense?
Most of the time, the effect seems to be neutral at best. Princip did nothing for Serbian nationalism. Goatse provided a founding myth for a secular, not Hindu, state. James Earl Ray didn't kill the Civil Rights Movement but birthed a martyr. Charitably, Brutus may have delayed empire for a decade or so. Who knows what Oswald's political opinions were, but it's almost certain that they didn't come to fruition.
The only effective assassination I can really think of is Booth's. He managed to eliminate a politician who was a genuine driving force toward something the "deep state" wasn't particularly interested in, and it made the Reconstruction stillborn, with a new President not particularly interested in tackling a hard problem anyways. It was going to be a hard slog anyways, but he killed it with a bullet.
Maybe there were some Russian anarchists who maybe helped the serfs a bit?
Explicit note for any insane Motteizans (and lurking Feds): even ignoring morality, most of the time assassination seems useless at best and counterproductive at worst.
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