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VoxelVexillologist

Multidimensional Radical Centrist

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joined 2022 September 04 18:24:54 UTC 

				
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VoxelVexillologist


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Multidimensional Radical Centrist

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 04 18:24:54 UTC
				


				
					

					
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User ID: 64


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 6, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The 1949 Nobel Prize in medicine was given to the doctor who developed the lobotomy, and has never been rescinded.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Israel-Gaza Megathread #2
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


To the degree that Hamas is not the legitimate government of the Palestinian people




Lately, I've found myself wondering quite a bit about the responsibility to overthrow illegitimate governments engaging in terrorism and war crimes.  On one hand, there is a lot of hiding behind failed state governments and claiming "they don't represent us" or similar.  On the other, I'm not completely comfortable with the idea that random citizens are responsible for their government's actions -- are average Americans valid targets because of [acts of imperialism]?  I suppose one answer is yeschad.jpg with the caveat that doing so makes you a legitimate target for American ordnance too.


If the US were to pop off a few long-range rockets (Trident II or Minuteman III, naturally) at it's foe-of-the-month and the claim that the chain of command wasn't legitimate ("the Commander-in-Chief only won a minority of votes in the last election!"), I doubt anyone would believe cries of "collective punishment"  to justify ignoring the attacks and not responding in-kind.


So while I'm not really happy with the idea, the concept that if you have failed (or even morally bad) governance you have not just the right, but the responsibility to establish something morally better with more popular sovereignty.  But at the same time, that's not always easy (see the KGB and Gestapo).


It seems like a hard question about when (attempting to) overthrow an immoral government is morally obligatory: there seems a continuum between, say, your average Vietnam War protester, and Stauffenberg attempting a coup in Nazi Germany.  It doesn't admit easy, morally clean answers.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 3, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


A first generation, in which people primarily followed real-life friends or acquaintances of those friends (and so on). Those real-life friends shared their thoughts, pictures, ideas, inane ramblings and so on. This was Facebook and its predecessors like MySpace and Friendster.




I am, to be honest, a little sad that the Facebook of 10-15 years ago isn't really around anymore.  To some extent, the friend network is still there and it's interesting to me to follow what my classmates and friends at the time are now up to.  I think there's till a market for a good service like that for mainly keeping in touch and tracking major life events ("births, deaths, and marriages"), but modern Facebook seems to aggressively recommend Instagram-like creators rather than creating an environment where I can see "oh, this friend from college just moved to the same town as me" and stimulate real communities.  But maybe I'm just getting old and reaching the "old man yells at someone else's computer cloud" stage.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


And then gets hits by sales taxes anyway when he spends his money in the future.




I have occasionally mused that a truly-progressive sales tax could be interesting: tax total expenditures up to, say, the median cost of living at one rate, and marginal expenditures above at a higher rate.  This would probably need some allowance for amortization on bigger purchases.  The idea being to tax the wealth when it's spent, and intentionally incentivising capital investments rather than conspicuous expenditures.


But it's a very wonkish policy proposal that would be hard to sell to the broader public, I think.  And probably has quite a few details that would need ironing out.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You know, I can acknowledge that the pattern you're seeing exists, but I've never taken that much umbrage at it, probably because I mostly limit my content to older, or really highly reviewed stuff.  Similar, to the question of whether the demographics of the cast need to match the source material.  But I did come across an instance of it recently that bothered me a little, and felt notable.


I really enjoyed Masters of the Air: it was really excellent on most of the axes I care about -- screenwriting, visuals, acting, and such.  But at one point, during an ensemble shot of the American air crews, I thought to myself "those guys all look British," so I looked into it on IMDB -- most of the main cast are British or Irish.  Even the Tuskegee Airmen weren't played by African-American actors.  Some of that might have been due to pandemic restrictions, or using local actors for logistical reasons, but it felt off.  Not that there aren't lots of Americans of such descent, but a group of (white, 1940s) Americans should look more diverse than that: I had a [redacted] whose family had recently immigrated from [Europe, not Britain] that served and died in a B-24 over Germany.


Maybe it's that it's intended as a historical account, but it feels like it cheapens the narrative ("heroic American airmen bring the fight to Nazi Germany"), and it's not as if the British weren't there and similarly heroic at the time.  A similar series portraying RAF Bomber Command would probably be pretty interesting!


That said, I would recommend the series overall as a worthy followup to Band of Brothers and The Pacific.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Have you looked at the numbers for pumped storage?  A kilo of gasoline stores enough energy to raise a similar kilo of water more than four thousand kilometers.  The sheer volumes you'd need to lift to match the energy density of a single floating roof tank (or oil tanker) would be absurd, and you'd need to scatter pumped lakes the size of Lake Mead all over the country, and even then probably couldn't handle seasonal variation. Not to mention that reservoirs are themselves not that environmentally friendly or that there aren't many good sites to start from that aren't already used.


IMO generating hydrocarbons is the most viable storage technology (plus it works with existing supplied energy infrastructure), but even there robust, scalable chemical processes are lacking.  Hydrogen is easier chemically but harder to store.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


This will definitely end up erasing a lot of Native American culture from our interpretation of history.




You know, I've had the same thought about things like renaming sports teams.  Not that the previous name of the Washington Commanders wasn't offensive, but that we've established a de facto rule that mentions of Native American culture or history are offensive, but also that nobody got fired for just completely ignoring the topic.  It already feels like public awareness of real native traditions and people has dropped tangibly in the culture over the last few decades of my life because attempts to bring it up are soured by (IMO bad-faith, shallow) criticism that it's "problematic" or doesn't cast enough native actors.  Not that there's nothing at all to those claims, but I think they end up being overall counterproductive, and in practice are just erasing it from the culture completely.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 18, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'd be curious if Section 5 of the 14th Amendment ("The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.") indicates that Congress, and not Colorado, is responsible for its enforcement.  But it doesn't feel like a slam dunk argument.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Interesting: my deep-rooted American egalitarian sentiments do show up occasionally, most recently in a "um, hell no" reaction to rumors that Meghan, Duchess of Sussex was considering running for office in California.  Royal titles are cute, but very un-American.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 18, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


To elaborate, whenever the expected utility from discrimination exceeds the costs. If there's a genetic test that correlated with a 0.05% increase in risk for colon cancer, no sensible insurance company would order it, nor should a sane employer hinge their employment decisions upon it, because that would just be a pain in the ass.




I'm not sure I agree with this: there are lots of tests like BRCA1 that reveal something like 40% of women with the gene will develop breast cancer.  Large employers often self-insure for employee health insurance (often with a known insurer providing the infrastructure and managing benefits), so health care costs actually come directly out of their bottom line.  I can imagine that the math works out pretty easily that if, say, Starbucks knew of a positive test for the gene or a family history of certain diseases, it would actually be an actuarial loss to hire certain candidates and provide health insurance.


The US prohibits discrimination in employment on the basis of genetic information, and I'm not sure I disagree with the idea that we should do so.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
IMO the fact that the universe exists is a fairly compelling argument for theism generally.  Any science undergraduate will understand that zero everywhere is a very satisfactory solution to all of the relevant field equations, but the fact that anything is here at all implies a far more complicated arrangement.  I personally find it more compelling than life, even intelligent life, existing within the universe.


But that's just my opinion and it's hardly conclusive ontological proof.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Now 75k a year of migrants is probably NYC fair share of migrants for how many are coming.




One comparison I think is interesting is that the number of illegal border crossings each month in 2022 (~200k) is roughly the size of the Russian force that originally invaded Ukraine in February.  Obviously those crossing into the US aren't an armed force bent on regime change, but I think it gives an interesting perspective to the scale of the problem that someone (wrongly, as it turns out) thought that was a large enough force to invade a country with more people than California.


Honestly, I think the Democrats have a branding problem in that they've been positioning themselves as Anti-Republican on this (among other issues) without universally wanting unfettered immigration either.  But when word gets around that "Uncle Joe will let us in" and people start turning up, they can't exactly admit that some degree of restriction is valid and desirable, so they do things like quietly continue building Trump's wall.


I also think we need to reconsider the idea that the shibboleth "asylum" when said to border agents should grant months-to-years of legal residency until claims can be reviewed with no real teeth for failure-to-appear.  It sounds nice in principle, but seems prone to abuse.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


but Biden needs the progressive left to win this election




Unironically, I don't think this was true two years ago.  If he'd have played Bill Clinton's playbook from the 90s and governed as center-left, I think he could have a high enough approval rating that we wouldn't be taking a rematch of the 2020 election seriously.  But it seems, to me at least, that the current administration doesn't want to moderate its positions to appeal to the median voter: I'm hard pressed to think of many cases where it's been willing to push back against progressive partisans.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
IMO the most convincing argument (and what I think SCOTUS is most likely to base its decision on) is that section 3 disqualification, specifically, is not self-executing under section 5, and that some specific action (legislation?) by Congress is necessary to invoke it, which has not happened in this case.


On the other hand, I doubt a partisan Congress (maybe even a single house) passing a simple-majority resolution that "[X] is disqualified from seeking office under the Fourteenth Amendment" really should be sufficient either.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 18, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


but for the most part it is genuinely superior to be a legally precarious migrant worker in the US than a Venezuelan citizen in Venezuela.




But I was told by Bernie Sanders that the American Dream was more alive in Venezuela than the US.


/s (he recommended an editorial that said as much)


Although there is a (right-coded? at least a historical) version of the American Dream for which this seemingly is true: "Life will be better if we move to America and become Americans." There is much less positivism about the future within the country these days.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 4, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


doing what it takes to actually solve [X] would make America look bad...




This seems a correct take, and generalizes to quite a bit of the everyday grumbling we hear about other "unsolvable" problems like homelessness, uninsured drivers, and street crime.  Not that the solutions that look bad are always effective, but they are probably moreso than current inaction.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 10, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The British Caribbean possessions, Jamaica, Barbados, etc, achieved independence directly with the British government without American involvement.




I realize it's a complicated history, but how would you describe Grenada, which was invaded by the Reagan administration within a decade of formal independence?


Also worth noting would be American possessions: the Philippines were granted independence from the US in a decade-long process that started before WWII.  Cuba was won from Spain in 1898 and granted independence (mostly) by the US in 1902.


There are also quite a few quasi-colonial possessions still floating around under various flags and governance: Puerto Rico, Tahiti, the Falklands, Aruba, Guyane, American Samoa, and so forth.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 22, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


It's not bizarre at all if you remember that ChatGPT has no inner qualia. It does not have any sort of sentience or real thought. It writes what it writes in an attempt to predict what you would like to read.




I don't think I disagree here, but I don't have a good grasp of what would be necessary to demonstrate qualia.  What is it? What is missing? It's something, but I can't quite define it.


If you asked me a decade ago I'd have called out the Turing Test.  In hindsight, that isn't as binary as we might have hoped.  In the words of a park ranger describing the development of bear-proof trash cans, "there is a substantial overlap between the smartest bears and the dumbest humans."  It seems GPT has reached the point where, in some contexts, in limited durations, it can seem to pass the test.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 8, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I am pretty firmly of the opinion that any post-scarcity society we can build looks less like UBI socialism and more like massive deflation in the pricing of essentials driven by automation and capital investments.


There are plenty of commodities that used to be expensive and are now basically free.  Salt and pepper used to be valuable commodities, but now are tossed carelessly in paper packets into food packaging and largely discarded.  Within the last century we've driven food prices down to where basically nobody in the West dies of starvation because they can't afford food: there are plenty of charities that together manage to make sure everyone is fed, although I'll concede the nutrition is often lacking.


But I also think the hedonic treadmill is a powerful thing and we can relatively easily convince ourselves that things haven't objectively changed: to me post-scarcity seems doomed to always look like the distant future, but is actually an asymptote we can steadily approach.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 3, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I will admit I've never understood the argument for absolute prosecutorial immunity.  I understand, at least in principle, that qualified immunity makes sense -- although in practice it's stretched comically far -- to protect good-faith but mistaken exercises of government authority.  Especially in the heat of the moment, I can appreciate that mistakes happen.  But prosecutors aren't operating in haste and should have plenty of time to consider their moral and legal obligations before they take actions.  I don't think they can earnestly argue haste due to the right to "speedy trial", because trial dates seem frequently long-delayed.


Would someone care to convince me that absolute immunity in this context isn't just those in power protecting themselves at the cost of the rights of everyone else?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 27, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Low density car focussed suburbs don't scale. You just can't widen the highways enough to keep up with demand as you build out. It leads to ever worsening gridlock.




They scale tolerably as long as the primary travel distances don't grow too large.  The idea that a large fraction of the populace needs to commute downtown doesn't, but there are plenty of jobs (even office workers) that can find employment in suburbs.


I'm not going to say we actually build suburbs this way (in particular, people choose neighborhoods for things like schools that vary drastically in quality), but at least in principle it seems possible.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 20, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
One of the concerns about drastically changing the health care system is that, despite it's flaws, people using the system are concerned that changing it could make it worse in at least their local case.  People want to "keep their doctor," and aren't sure whether their doctor covered by their current insurance would take Medicare For All.  For better or worse, the folks shouting about "keeping government out of my Medicare" don't directly care that the government is paying, but they do care if they have to change doctors or pay more out of pocket: major changes to reimbursement rates or rules could absolutely cause their doctor to drop Medicare patients.


While insurance companies often mix things up (changing in-network providers to out-of-network annually), there isn't much trust that a federal solution would be better.  Witness the SNAFU that was the launch of the ACA exchanges, or that the states promising to move to single-payer at the time have all quietly dropped those plans.


Helicopter money for healthcare probably polls better because it changes these things less directly by distorting the market and is difficult to compare.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 13, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
A couple years back, several red state legislatures adopted bills designating certain employees (in particular, public university employees) as "mandatory reporters" of sexual discrimination under Title IX.  At first it seemed a bit odd because normally boosting the Title IX office isn't a Republican priority, but in thinking about it, it seems that it was likely done at least partially to hang a nice-sounding Sword of Damocles over anyone attempting to run such a curriculum.


I don't know if I can comment on it's success, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it expanded to include racial discrimination in the future.  There is also that outstanding SCOTUS case about affirmative action that may substantially shake things up.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Do you mind commenting on how cold it's getting outside?  There was some concern in the previous post about heat pumps at low temperatures, but newer models claim to outperform baseboard for surprisingly low temperatures.  It hasn't happened often, but my heat pump worked into the low 10s (F) during the cold snap a few weeks back.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Every time I've heard this discussed, the consensus seems to be that the King might be able to dissolve parliament once on a technicality, but would fairly quickly find himself stripped of that power, perhaps of the Crown itself, and possibly the dissolution of the office. Several post-colonial states have successfully done this, most recently Barbados last year.


But as someone not a subject to aforementioned crown, I can't trivially vouch for that expectation's accuracy.