VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
No bio...
User ID: 64
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
3d ago
Obligatory: "The Earth isn't a sphere, it's an oblate spheroid."
"Actually, I prefer an equipotential geoid model. EGM84 or better."
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
3d ago
Observably, humans have these same problems, or ones that look similar from a distance: organizations run with sycophantic "yes men" seem to produce worse output broadly across fields from engineering to governance to film production. Is it really surprising that universally warm and empathetic text responses don't always produce "good" outcomes and sometimes reassure our worst instincts? It takes a certain level of, well, something to want friends and colleagues that will challenge your bad ideas.
I generally only play with free models, but I've had ChatGPT tell me an idea was wonderful and I should look to get it published despite me knowing that it had clear flaws in the math.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
5d ago
Note that Columbia ended up settling a lawsuit with the guy in question on account of (presumed) Title IX violations in the course of its disciplinary actions and allowing the performance art piece, including issuing a formal apology.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
5d ago
super homogeneous
Is there any other country in Europe that has as many official languages (4, not including English as a common lingua franca)? Granted, Singapore has that many too, but I'd hesitate on calling either "homogeneous" across the board.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
6d ago
Just finished Spring Snow. I'd seen it recommended a few different places (maybe here, maybe HN). I've never been a weeb, but I've visited Japan -- it's a beautiful and very interesting country -- and I can appreciate why Mishima is seen as such a prominent Japanese writer of the 20th century. Some of the vibe was to be expected, like the very Japanese aesthetics, and the tension between Japanese traditions and incoming Western norms during the Meiji era.
That said, I was intrigued at the following author blurb at the back of the book:
In 1970, at the age of forty-five and the day after completing the last novel in the Fertility series, Mishima committed seppuku (ritual suicide) -- a spectacular death that attracted worldwide attention.
I felt I had to read a bit more to understand this. Wikipedia tells the story slightly differently:
[Mishima] was a Japanese author, poet, playwright, actor, model, Shintoist, ultranationalist, and the leader of an attempted coup d'état that culminated in his seppuku (ritual suicide).
Well, that escalated quickly. Having read that article, it's interesting to see how story beats from the author's life: "After briefly considering marriage with Michiko Shōda, who later married Crown Prince Akihito and became Empress Michiko" sounds a lot like the story of the novel.
Looking for something shorter and more sci-fi, I've picked up Asimov's The End of Eternity, which I think someone recommended a while back. I might consider continuing the Fertility series at some point, though.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
9d ago
To be fair, the fact that Costco (et al) sell giant containers of acetaminophen is kinda scary to me. It's substantially more dangerous than naproxen (also available in that size). The 24-count restriction sounds pretty reasonable to me.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
9d ago
During WW2, China lost nearly all its modern equipment and trained forces in the early days of the war, leaving them to fight the remainder of the war with only obsolete or crudely made small arms, against an enemy with machine guns, trucks, tanks, artillery, and air support.
The Allies (primarily the US) provided a total of something like 650,000 tons of materiel to China via The Hump, at the cost of nearly 600 aircraft and around 1700 crew lost. There were also notable Allied air units (and some ground units) in China during the war.
Which isn't to diminish their accomplishment, but it wasn't completely a solo effort.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
9d ago
Red tribe defection doesn't look like random acts of terror.
It demonstrably can: look at Oklahoma City. But I think you're right in the general case.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
9d ago
One of the biggest sources of illegal guns is parked cars.
I'd be curious what fraction of guns left in parked cars are left their because their owners can't legally keep them on their person where they've parked --- bars (depending on state), private property that disallows carrying, etc. I'm not going to blindly use that to push for legalizing carry everywhere (honestly, probably not my preference), but the numbers would at least be interesting.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
9d ago
There's probably a defensible, if aggressive, claim that the universal suffrage has proven more dangerous (in terms of deaths per capita) than (universal) firearms ownership. Definitely some error bars on the hypothetical impact of more gun ownership, and exactly which government actions are attributable to "voters" specifically --- How many bodies sit at the feet of voters in the 1932 Weimar Germany elections? Every victim of state violence in democratic states? Do we count communist "elections"? --- but I think the Libertarian premise that "nothing is more dangerous to a people than their government" has at least some academic merit.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
10d ago
Yeah, the distinction there is pretty subtle, and I can't think of a case in which it's ever actually mattered. Maybe we'll see that in the lawsuits over White House press pool access: is there a relevant act of Congress establishing that at all? But it generally seems to be considered to apply to the government as a whole.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
10d ago
the First Amendment protects citizens and probably permanent residents, but possibly not those on temporary visas.
The text of the First Amendment specifically binds Congress: "Congress shall make no law...", while other amendments say "the right of the people...". Courts have generally read the First pretty broadly with respect to free speech protections. Excluding the no-longer-binding Schenck, I can't think of too many cases the speech advocates have lost. On the other hand, I can't see anyone reading it as preventing a ban on literal propaganda from foreign enemies. Limitations on issued (or renewed) visas for foreign nationals on the basis of their speech seems rather borderline.
I don't think the Founders intended to require letting in visitors who call for, say, the violent overthrow of the US government --- citizens doing so are already barred from security clearances, for example, without too much fanfare.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
10d ago
In the past I've known people who've made a simple HTML page with some links on it set as the home page for easy access from new tabs. Not sure if file:// would send a referrer, but a lightweight local-only server isn't crazy either. I doubt they know they're sending referrer headers.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
10d ago
Somewhere there is a good sketch comedy when you realize a good chunk of "almost every person" who'd be scandalized actually agrees with you.
I don't think you're alone: I think I am far more centrist than you are, but the rest of the description applies to me. I try to avoid discussing politics IRL, although griping about general government incompetence is evergreen, although not trivially to actually solve generally.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
10d ago
That is an interesting question: to what extent is "suicide watch" in a prison actually taken seriously, versus as a rubber-stamped "well, we tried" box to feel better about ourselves without substantially changing things. It's a somewhat dark thought, but I guess not surprising.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
10d ago
Sending a letter to a random attorney with 1000$ of cash and instructions to forward an encrypted message (or the decryption key) to the media in case of your death is something which could work
To the lawyers in the audience: are random requests like this common? I realize direct anecdotes might be subject to confidentiality, but are these sorts of things heard of?
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
10d ago
That seems possible as applied to state government expenditures (likely subject to federal rules like the one in question, subject to future court rulings).
We never did get a ruling on California's attempt to boycott several red states, which at least seems related. But in a world in which the court accepts Wickard, I suspect the feds would win both the domestic and foreign state expenditures questions if it makes it to court.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
11d ago
That is pretty impressive. Is it allowed to search the web? It looks like it might be. I think the canonical test I'm proposing would disallow that, but it is a useful step in general.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
11d ago
Computationally, maybe all we are is Markov chains. I'm not sold, but Markov chat bots have been around for a few decades now and used to fool people occasionally even at smaller scales.
LLMs can do pretty impressive things, but I haven't seen convincing evidence that any of them have stepped clearly outside the bounds of their training dataset. In part that's hard to evaluate because we've been training them on everything we can find. Can a LLM trained on purely pre-Einstein sources adequately discuss relativity? A human can be well versed in lots of things with substantially less training material.
I still don't think we have a good model for what intelligence is. Some have recently suggested "compression", which is interesting from an information theory perspective. But I won't be surprised to find that whatever it is, it's actually an NP-hard problem in the perfect case, and everything else is just heuristics and approximations trying to be close. In some ways it'd be amusing if it turns out to be a good application of quantum computing.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
11d ago
It isn't foolproof, though: Warren Buffet somewhat famously drives (drove? He's pretty old) a hail-damaged 2014 Cadillac.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
11d ago
If I passed a law in North Dakota that said “no money goes to Asian countries,” it’s perfectly fine.
Is it? The Constitution puts almost all powers of international relations at the federal level. States aren't allowed to engage in treaties or establish their own taxes on goods entering or leaving the country.
Arguably some states do this in practice: a few have somewhat banned certain Chinese companies (TikTok, Huawei), but most of those laws/rules at least claim to be following federal guidance.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
12d ago
I think the vibes of applying civil rights law to "white people" have changed drastically since the 1980s. Certainly not unanimously, but witness the Trump administration's consideration of refugee status for white South Africans (I'm going to choose not to express an opinion on that at this time).
But there have IIRC been a few instances of academic conferences having to walk back "International submissions encouraged. Israeli academics need not apply."
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
12d ago
If you want to see this in action, the political arguments are practically reversed on the issue of the "Muslim ban" in Trump's first term: that one even included North Korea! IIRC the administration at the time claimed it was based on security cooperation agreements and just happened to hit mostly Muslim nations (but not all such nations) with poor recordkeeping.
I'm not sure I'm happy with that one either, for the record.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
12d ago
a young woman, without having SUBSTANTIAL oversight, can't tell one of these guys apart from a more committed partner,
I think the very traditional advice of "wait until marriage" does actually work here. It may have its other failure modes (well documented elsewhere), but it certainly requires a non-trivial time and legal commitment from a partner that would "tell one of these guys apart."
Isn't it a Danish company? I've wondered about that because I've seen lots of concern about cuts to research funding citing GLP medications as an example, but it seems odd that my tax dollars payed for the research, and now I would have to pay the Danes, as it were, to use it.
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