VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
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User ID: 64
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr 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
1yr 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
1yr 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
1yr 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
1yr 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
1yr 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
1yr 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
1yr 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
1yr 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
1yr 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."
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
While in practice I'll accept that it's complicated, both sides of the aisle seem to have, in some cases begrudgingly, agreed that "discrimination on the basis of national origin" is verboten. Under the lens of the Civil Rights Act, a company saying "We won't do business with Israeli nationals" (note the number of dual-citizenships and US citizens residing in Israel, which is more than in Canada) is a pretty transparent violation.
It is a bit less clear that this applies to foreign companies: "we prefer to buy from domestic suppliers" is well within the Overton Window, even "would prefer not to buy from China" is probably not objectionable (and "do not do business with Iran and North Korea" is effectively mandated, although those congressional mandates presumably trump congressional civil rights law). But in this particular case, "will not buy from Israel-linked companies" is pretty strongly associated with attempts to discriminate against persons of Israeli origin. I think this case is maybe winnable, but you'd likely need to be squeaky clean on the persons (not corporate) level.
Now, there are also good arguments to be made about absolute freedom of association here, but most of those have, to my knowledge, mostly lost in court. Overturning the better part of a century of civil rights law is something that is neither a small ask, nor popular outside of a handful of principled libertarians (and witches). I don't think that's to be done lightly.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
I have very mixed feelings about the topic, but the debate over gene therapy and cochlear implants in the deaf community is at least philosophically interesting. On one hand, functional ears are a blessing and it makes sense to heal people where possible, but on the other it's not wrong that this effectively implies the destruction of a legitimate cultural community built around the disability. Neither answer feels fully satisfying to me.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
At least in this case I think there is an added political dimension of reluctance to update the model: "You were happy enough to overestimate [measurement] for my opponent last term, and now you want to publish lower estimates, maybe even underestimates on my watch. Are you trying to display partisan bias?"
In addition to the value of "we've at least measured it consistently for the last century, even if there are known issues with it it's easier to fix those in post", which also has some value.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
Early space suits were very hard to work in because constant-volume flexible pressure vessels are hard. This has gotten better, but isn't a fully solved problem. In much the same way that early aircraft required large forces on the controls (flying a B-17 I'm told is an arm workout on a good day, doubly so when the trim settings are damaged). It doesn't take a serious bodybuilder to fly an Airbus today, though.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
For all the hype of the selection process for the first astronaut class --- The Right Stuff is a fantastic movie --- I don't think the current process is anywhere near as physically rigorous. They're probably still fit relative to the populace, but it's no longer quite the standard of perfection they started with. Deke Slayton of the Mercury 7 was grounded at the time for a minor heart issue, but got to fly later, and John Glenn was pretty old (77) when he flew again on the Space Shuttle in 1998.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
How much do you think the average prospective parents care about hair color, and coarsely, height? I assume for the latter it isn't "Will be 74 inches tall", and most parents aren't looking to start an NBA team accidentally. I see how it could happen, and why that's concerning, but it seems IMO likely that at least one of (1) nurture matters more than straight genetics here, (2) most parents only have strong preferences against major genetic ailments, and even (3) IQ-linked genes may have negative externalities when all selected for at once (many such debates around).
I think this also assumes ubiquitous IVF, as opposed to the "conceived in the Riviera" approach considered in Gattaca.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
Honestly I've never been a fan of ones too large to look believable --- there's a reasonable range that adjusts with frame size.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
One question would be whether American Eagle actually considers this press coverage a negative. Edgy ads that fill opinion pages are hardly unheard of. But is it actually selling jeans?
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
This seems true, but it seems a bit funny to me because in many ways it's easier to change your figure (via diet and exercise) than your face (beyond haircuts and grooming). The human figure is a very functional thing that conforms to what you do with it.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
Maybe the Smithsonian poster was the wrong example, but the tone and content of the comment I replied to struck me, at least, very much the mirror of a Kendi or DiAngelo. To moderately change the quote:
[white] people make [white] institutions, which in turn generate a consensus reality wherein [Whiteness] is obviously true and correct, with contrary facts elided or buried.
Googling for "interlocking system of control" shows at least one notable book from 1982 (The Highest Stage of White Supremacy by John W. Cell) that uses exactly that phrase to describe white supremacy:
A complex, interlocking system of control that regulated the lives and to some extent the minds of millions of people on both sides of the color line. [...] The principal function of the segregationist ideology was to soften class and ethnic antagonisms among whites, subordinating internal conflicts to the unifying conception of race.
I'm willing to take the original comment in good faith, but it really seems like it's perilously close to becoming the tribalism I take it as literally arguing against: "[outgroup] has rigged the system to keep [ingroup] down!" is, while in both cases probably true to some extent, is a meme I don't think is helpful in most circumstances.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
To play along with the analogy, the Gom Jabbar doesn't work if the test is safe. It may not be enough to run the test in a sandbox: it's easy enough to behave "correctly" a limited test, and far harder to consistently buckle down and get work done instead of Motteposting watching TikTok videos all day.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
Peripherally, I think your point has a kernel of truth, but I worry that you're constructing a worldview in a direction that is prone to revanchism and decoupling from reality. Your complaints sound uncomfortably close to the logic behind that infamous Smithsonian poster, but complaining about blue, rather than white power structures.
At least, it makes me uncomfortable even though I think there are certainly elements of truth to it.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
She's refusing to see a therapist alone or with me, she's refused to see a psychiatrist.
If you have the capacity, you might consider talking to a therapist for yourself, partially because this is a lot to deal with, and partially because they may be more familiar with resources and ideas that may be helpful to her.
It probably isn't much, but you have my sympathies and prayers, anonymous internet friend.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
WW2 affected more people than just jews.
At the risk of invoking a meme around here, "What did you think 'Never Again' looked like? Vibes? Essays? Poetry?"
Of course it potentially meant finding or making a safe place for themselves and investing in defense spending to be too thorny to tangle with again. That mentality clearly seems to explain how they interact with parties that call for their deaths regularly (see the Houthi flag, for example). Many of those calls come from Muslims, but I'm not sure they like Richard Spencer any better.
But that 'Never Again' thread runs in other groups too: see defense spending in Poland and Finland, arguably China and Korea too. Or why you shouldn't ask the South American with a German last name when their ancestors moved to the New World (not always 1945, but it's common enough).
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.
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