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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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				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Griner could trivially avoid interaction with the hostile foreign government by not going to their territory and breaking their laws.




I haven't been following this case terribly closely, but is it completely clear that she did break the law?  The Russian state doesn't (currently or even historically) have a particular reputation for honesty.  As such, I have do wonder (without evidence) that the case may have been staged to garner a political prisoner as a potential future bargaining chip.  Or that she actually did bring in the contraband, but was subjected to additional scrutiny in the hopes of finding a charge.  But I'll concede that it's perfectly possible the charges are actually above board.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 28, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Like if someone makes a comment implying the police are racist or something,




Honestly, it's not too hard to acknowledge that this does happen more often than it would in an ideal world (never, presumably).    I don't think I know anyone who thinks police racism is a good thing.  Maybe someone wants to argue that Bayes makes it worthwhile, but I don't find that terribly compelling.


That humans are fallible is unsurprising, but how to design systems that work despite human failings is the core of civil political discourse.  The extreme points of repressive jackboots and Mad Max anarchy are both pretty obviously undesirable to most: How do we choose balance personal freedom and public safety? Who watches the watchmen? These seem like less charged directions you can steer such a conversation.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 25, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Iraq?




I sometimes consider the hypothetical world in which the 2003 invasion was skipped.  It's obviously hard to predict such outcomes, but I think it's not implausible a continued Hussein regime might not be better for the average Iraqi.  It's not like they had a particularly good human rights record.


Sure, there was a lot of destruction from the war (which I'd generally agree was poorly-conceived), but how would Iraq have faced the Arab Spring?  It seems plausible that could have ended less like ISIS and more like the still-ongoing Syrian Civil War, likely complete with Russia intentionally bombing civilian targets and waves of refugees fleeing to Europe.


For all it's faults in the invasion, the country now could be much worse than it is today.  Which is distinctly not an endorsement of the operation, merely a pause for consideration.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
As a non-lawyer, it's fairly well known that lying on the ATF Form 4473 basically never results in charges (as of the 2018 GAO report, at least -- they claim they're trying to increase those numbers).  In FY 2017, 8.6M reported transactions led to 112k denials, 12.7k investigations, and 12 prosecutions.  Presumably every one of those denials lied about eligibility on that form, barring questionable corner cases like "I forgot I have a felony conviction."


Note that Form 4473 here is the one that asks "Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?" and notes in bold that lying on the form is itself a felony.  I most often see this referenced by people in gun circles complaining that the law as-written is not enforced.


As much as I wish we'd actually, like, enforce laws in this country, starting to enforce previously-mostly-ignored laws specifically with people close to politicians is a bit of a bad look.  OTOH, I'd really like to see us hold those in positions of power to a higher standard, rather than a lower one.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 14, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This is one of the places where I find the current left/right divide to be incongruous: the left here sees a strong need to protect people from themselves, but only in certain instances.  Your argument is a general one for banning the sale of potentially dangerous objects to prevent self-harm.   But at the same time we're told that the addicts shooting up heroin on the streets are Living Their Best Lives and we couldn't possibly try to take away substances that demonstrably cause harm to individuals and society as a whole, because Individual Freedoms, although we can try to ban large soft drinks.  This largely holds in reverse for the right.


Fundamentally, society is a coordination problem, and those are hard and seem to lack generalized solutions.  Different scales have different optima: I unironically run my household as a socialist collective (from each, to each...) but wouldn't vote for such policies in even small town government.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 25, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Price deflation is still pretty bad because it shifts gains towards capital and away from workers.




While economists seem pretty convinced that modest inflation is preferable to modest deflation, I'm personally unconvinced that for modest, predictable rates (which plausibly excludes Gold or Bitcoin) it matters much either direction.  There are examples of specific commodities deflating (specifically, "for the same price in dollars next year I can get more/better product": computers, flat-panel TVs, cell phones, even cars) and none of the promised miserly spending habits have really appeared that I can tell.  Apple didn't become a trillion dollar company because everyone is patiently waiting to get a better iPhone next year rather than this year.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


the Russians did not establish Nazi-style concentration camps for industrialized slaughter




I think it's worth noting that while the camps are the most well-publicized part of the Holocaust, a decent fraction of the deaths, especially early in the war were attributable to death squads with guns rounding up "undesirables."


There have definitely been recorded mass graves in places like Bucha that at least seem to resemble this sort of policy of wanton death.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Whoops, I knew it was supposed to be "commuted" but must have been in too much of a hurry when typing the original comment to notice.  Thanks for correcting that!


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				In Defense of The Boring Company
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I long assumed that Twitter's character limit was maintained due to a database schema somewhere: a fixed-size Tweet structure probably makes a lot of sense, although if you're reserving 10kB for each post here I bet that would add up quick.  Although with compression perhaps that's less of an issue.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Destruction of the Rafah Ghetto




Why is the obvious World War II comparison of Rafah to the Warsaw Ghetto?  I can think of a number of other plausible comparisons that are probably worth considering.  This is, admittedly, a rather hot take, but why not compare Rafah to Berlin in 1945?  After the Third Reich invaded most of Eastern Europe, including rampant raping and pillaging across the countryside, and that entire campaign of deliberate ethnic cleansing and genocide, nobody looks at the Allied decision to demand complete, unconditional surrender as unreasonable, or that they kept fighting all the way to Berlin.  Nobody argues that Stalin was deliberately unprepared at the start of the war to justify flattening Germany and running parts of it as a puppet state for Soviet gain.  Nobody of import says "countless German civilians died because Roosevelt and Stalin were unwilling to enact a unilateral ceasefire at the Rhine and the Oder."  Nobody serious mourns the Volkssturm civilians (frequently children) that were handed primitive weapons for futile resistance, without also recognizing the broader context of the tragedy of the entire war.  And I'm not even going to even try to deny that the Red Army was infamous for its war crimes against civilians in the East, or the decades of subsequent political repression the Soviets brought to Eastern Europe during the Cold War.


The Axis powers entered the war in the late 1930s even though almost all modern historians consider their possibility of overall victory bleak.  Maybe they could have bargained for an advantageous quick peace, but even Yamamoto has (possibly-apocryphal) quotes about expecting to lose a longer war.  Hamas had even lower chances of winning in October.  I'm not convinced that this merits assuming that either power, as the "underdog," merits obvious sympathy, although that seems to be in vogue these days in certain circles.  Heck, if you look at ratios of civilian casualties -- as I've seen some argue makes Israel's actions unjustified -- America had almost none (generally counted as a few thousand if you include territories and civilian ship crews).  The British claim 70,000.  More civilians than that died in the Battle of Berlin alone, and Allied bombing campaigns killed hundreds of thousands.  Not to mention the nuclear weapons.


I have trouble embracing the progressive worldview on Gaza because those same principles, applied to WWII, would have me side with the Axis powers.  And I am quite certain that the world is a better place because the (Western) Allies won the day.  Not that they are perfect (ha!), but I'll certainly stan them over the major Axis players.


Not that I'd wholly endorse Israel to hit Rafah like Zhukov hit Berlin: I don't think the situation really warrants it, or that the situations are immediately similar.  Heck, I won't even try to argue that Israel hasn't committed atrocities in this situation.  But on the other, it seems about as reasonable as comparing Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto, and I'd be pretty amused to see some Tankies argue that the Red Army was in the wrong.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Israel-Gaza Megathread #2
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Is there a different video you would say provides the best evidence that the explosion was due to a rocket failure?




IIRC this launch corresponded to PIJ announcing they were using one of their new longer-range (read: bigger) rockets, so the prior spontaneous failure rate probably should be estimated to be pretty high.


As someone who is reasonably familiar with high-power rocketry and has at least read the literature on making large solid motors (which is what these are), scaling up is hard: even small imperfections in the solid grain can cause explosive failures.  Fail to get all the bubbles out when casting? Your burn rate (and thus chamber pressure, which can cause explosive failures) will vary drastically.  Or maybe your grain cracks and pieces clog the nozzle: now you have a bomb.


Best results require starting with precisely-sized powders, high-grade chemicals, and some industrial equipment (mixing, vacuum casting) that scales with the size of motor you're trying to make.  Most of that is something Hamas is having to make or smuggle in.  And even for well-prepared amateurs it doesn't always succeed the first time.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Israel-Gaza Megathread #2
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


if a particular building is bombed in Gaza nowadays I wouldn't need anyone's word to think it 99% likely that Israel did it




Even if the Bayesian statistics bear this out (I'm not quite as confident as you, but it is probably more likely than not), the better question is whether or not it's sufficient confidence to run "Israel bombs hospital, killing 500" headlines.  In this case, it seems like it probably shouldn't have been.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
One of the most relevant parts of that game theory, though, is how to re-establish trust and fairness given a history of defection.  Given a historically bipartisan-ly corrupt system, how do you begin enforcing the rules without appearing to play favorites?


Honestly it's a hard problem of soft skills: if there were an easy answer, any number of longstanding grudges (Israel/Palestine, etc) could be settled.  There are a few successful examples: Northern Ireland seems pretty peaceful these days.


For the record, I'd much prefer a non-corrupt system, but I think a partisanly corrupt system is probably even worse.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It's worth mentioning the Dutch famine in the winter of '44-45, which was largely caused by the German occupation, and during which the Allies (and others) tried to get food into the area.


But that's really just an interesting relevant anecdote and doesn't really disprove your general point.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 6, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


On the contrary, I think you're building a big assumption in here, that countries could simply provide "quality of life worth a damn" to everyone living under their umbrella and are electing not to out of spite. Instead, as that thread covered, even providing a low-quality of life for someone that can't fully care for themselves is incredibly expensive and a massive burden on nations that are dealing with inverted population pyramids.




I haven't really had a chance to rigorously think through this, but I've occasionally had an economics thought experiment involving total economic output being measured in working hours, rather than hard currency: given that the law demands specific caregiver-to-resident ratios for these communities (the reasons for which are not unreasonable, in my opinion), we can quantify what fraction of our cumulative efforts goes into providing for our elderly and infirm.  It seems reasonable that a society that spends more of its time this way isn't spending it on, say, fundamental research and technology.  Ultimately it seems like technology is, other than demographics, our only way to improve this number in the long run.


On the other hand, that presupposes that research and invention is a better use of our time, which quite possibly isn't always the case: would you trade grandma for yet another cryptocurrency startup?  So maybe this is just a derivative "increasing GDP doesn't reflect improving my societal preferences" complaint.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Israel-Gaza Megathread #2
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Israel uses conventional bombs and openly abandons any attempts at targeting.




I would observe that the easiest way to present this would be "Sorry, our budget for JDAM kits has run out.  We're switching to dumb bombs, and we have to drop them from high altitude (inaccurately, in larger numbers) because Hamas probably has MANPADs."  Comparatively few these days seem complain about Russia's use of unguided munitions.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 31, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
On the schools: urban districts in my experience have economies of scale going for them, and are able to have more magnet schools and AP coursework available.  Some (many, even) urban schools rank poorly academically compared to the suburbs, but their special programs can easily outperform smaller districts.


When someone tells me they are moving to the suburbs for better schools, I believe them: it's probably true for average students, but that isn't true of the schools you enumerated.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 27, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I have wondered what the bounds on the First Amendment are with respect to foreign nations establishing domestic "press." Presumably foreign nationals have freedom of speech in the US, but there is no need to allow actual enemy propaganda in wartime.  Less formal adversarial relationships like the Cold War seem much more ambiguous, but I'm unaware of much relevant precedent.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 19, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


A secondary objection of mine is the blurring of public and private boundary with how intelligence officials and agencies were coordinating with and sharing classified information with these companies in an effort to get them on-board with doing work for the FBI. It's difficult to articulate what I precisely find problematic here.




I have not been following the Twitter files particularly closely (nor am I a fan of Elon), but I think you're right here: while some of the actions are plausibly shady, it's unclear exactly where the lines that might have been crossed are.  In particular, private parties like Twitter presumably have a right to report and discuss things with law enforcement.  And law enforcement is allowed to ask nicely for data that would require a warrant to compel.  In this instance, none of that data would seem to incriminate Twitter, so they might well choose to share it: props to them for choosing not to do so.  Twitter can choose to hire ex-FBI folks -- indeed, for reducing certain unsavory criminal activities on their network, one can imagine that ex-FBI agents are in fact quite relevant subject matter experts on things.


There's certainly a level of implicit or explicit threat that would be too far, but I'm not sure I could pin that down.  I haven't seen any particular suggestion of a clear, flagrant violation.  The Hunter Biden laptop stuff (which seems to have been incorrectly flagged) gets quite close, but I haven't seen enough evidence to convince me that either side was deliberately acting in bad faith.  I don't like that Twitter's moderation seems to have had quite the political bias, but that is an annoyance, not a crime.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The volume and scale of ammunition required to keep the guns firing with an overmatch to make very slow gains over relatively basic trench systems created a tension of how much is needed versus how vulnerable you are moving that much ammo forward.




I think this statement also vindicates decades and billions of dollars of American research and deployment of precision guided weapons: the logistical tail is greatly reduced when you can just, not fire the huge fraction of dumb rounds that would miss anyway.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 25, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't see it as likely, but a Georgist modification to the existing property tax system could be interesting: adjust the relative rates on land value and improvement value in a potentially revenue-neutral fashion.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 18, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
One obvious line of attack would be for Republicans to take a straight party-line vote to impeach (as if a ham sandwich, which prosecutors can famously charge with anything) any and all accessible current office holders who might run on the other side under (Trumped up, one might say) charges of "insurrection" against the Constitution and demand that states remove them from ballots too.


But I don't think that is a good idea, nor are they currently well-enough aligned together to actually pull it off, probably for the better.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 4, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yeah, the school district was probably a similar situation, but I don't remember any similar dates of convenience for, say, Eid, Diwali, or Lunar New Year even though those probably had at least as many practitioners as there were Jews in the district.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 27, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


How much of your time do you dedicate to preserving, idk, virus culture? Random rock pile culture? Could ghonorrea or tuberculosis convince you that its presence (and use of precious resources such as human bodies) was a net positive, if it were sufficiently eloquent?




Probably?  We still keep around Smallpox samples in labs purely for the potential research its genetic diversity brings.  People are surprisingly passionate about random rock piles, doubly so for interesting cases [1] [2] [3] [4].  There are a few Star Trek episodes that ponder the idea of sentient parasites, for which I'd admit the answers are less clear.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 17, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


is that Ukraine disproves the classic supposition among many military and geopolitical strategists that a society with a very low birth rate would be unlikely to be motivated to fight a total war with very high casualties due to the comparatively high investment in individual children (eg. if you have only one child, him dying is a bigger deal than being an Afghan with 7 kids and 2 of them dying).




I have a slight suspicion that post-war Ukraine may see a bump in birth rates in the same way the US did after WWII.  I don't know that I would be qualified to speculate on the causes if that were to happen, though.