Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
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User ID: 551
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1d ago
DEI discriminates against white people: 33% - 41%
It remains interesting that people are simply misinformed about the facts. DEI policies, factually, are discrimination against white people (and Asian people). They literally cannot accomplish their stated goals without doing so, they are definitionally policies that implement discrimination. That's not an ironclad argument for or against them from where I sit, it's just the starting point that we all need to be aware of in order to have these conversations.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1d ago
I think this model will prove to be significantly more predictive of actual policy than pretty much any other model that I see people working with. When people ask, "if they were really for/against immigration, why wouldn't they do X?", the answer will frequently line up with whether it will be too mean or insufficiently mean rather than whether it appears to accomplish the stated policy preferences.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1d ago
I guess I still don't actually understand what your working model is here. Setting aside whether the new legislation would have been good or not for the moment, it seems clear and obvious that there are plenty of statutory reasons for removal or denial of entry that weren't being used. With that fact well established (at least to me), I immediately become very skeptical of anyone that tells me we need new legislation to accomplish something that they're not even trying to do with what's already on the books. So skeptical, in fact, that I tend to think there's an ulterior motive - perhaps there's some poison pill in the law I missed, perhaps they want the optics of saying they did something, perhaps they're shooting for a compromise lock-in that I don't want. From a game theoretic perspective, I would love an off-ramp from this equilibrium, but it's very hard for me to believe that the Defectbot that just did 243 consecutive tats has responded by agreeing to cooperate after only one tit.
I guess our disagreement is about whether the current laws provide statutory reasons for removal or denial of entry?
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
2d ago
Supposing this rule magically came to be, would this actually solve the issue and are there any major flaws/unintended consequences I've overlooked?
Even more incentive for lawyers to drag everything out forever.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
2d ago
For people upset about ICE and due process, this coverage is also not your friend. The framings- and the not-very-deep undercurrents that go against the framing- will give a basis to dismiss concern as motivated. The children-in-cage's and child-separation critiques are not going to be forgotten. The fact that not separating children from their deported parents is now a basis of criticism is going to undercut criticims of both. The media's rush to present a concerned father is going to run into discrediting disappointing revelations.
I agree, but what am I to do with that? Based on the "child separation", the "Dreamers", this case's publicity, and the general zeitgeist, it really does seem that the only policy that will actually be accepted by opponents on this is that if you have a child in the United States, you cannot be removed. There is no actual set of proceedings that could satisfy the demand that parents not be separated from their children but also that children cannot be deported with their parents. Any attempt to come up with some narrowly satisfactory resolution that would meet the due process standard that someone came up with approximately 15 minutes ago will slam into some new bad-faith litigation about why of course some deportations are fine, but not this one.
It is increasingly clear to me that getting any resembling what I would consider an appropriate level of deportations will actually just require deciding to be mean in a way that will alienate a significant number of people. My options are not between making a strong legal argument for position or just letting everyone stay, they're between deciding to look mean or just letting everyone stay. If meanness is going to be the actual deciding factor, that's what the decision-making from my side is going to have to be centered on, and I'm perfectly fine with just being mean at this point.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
2d ago
We've definitely wind up with 18. My personal stance is that this is pretty stupid and 16 is fine but the incentives against arguing that publicly substantially outweigh any gain from just shrugging and saying, "well, there ya go I suppose".
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
2d ago
None. I think the impact of tariffs will turn out to be wildly overrated. I have no actual empirical basis for that belief or an articulable mechanism, I just kind of don't believe that Nike is actually going to have more than a marginal price change. Maybe I'll be wrong, but my current stance is that "tariffs don't work" will be even more true than many people believe.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
4d ago
Whether I consider it satisfactory or not is hardly the point. There are many legal outcomes that I don't consider satisfactory, none of which I think I can remedy by electing to personally override the federal government's actions.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
4d ago
In the short span of time since I've heard this case, I've been trying to digest how exactly this fits in, and it's just so remarkably brazen that I can barely articulate it. I already thought that the more immigration-sympathetic judges played fast and loose with the rule of law, but it's on a completely different level to personally aid and abet the attempted escape of an illegal alien. When it's a legal proceeding with a decision I don't like, there's at least some pretense that we disagree about the law. This doesn't even have that fig leaf.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
17d ago
The purpose of a cancer hospital is to cure two-thirds of cancer patients.
The precision of the estimate is unreasonable but yeah, the purpose of a cancer hospital is to cure some of the patients. If someone was under the impression that the purpose was to cure 100% of people that walk through the door, they would be operating under a poor map of reality.
The purpose of the Ukrainian military is to get stuck in a years-long stalemate with Russia.
Yes, again, this is pretty much the purpose of the Ukrainian military. Much like the cancer hospital, rational actors would probably prefer that it be able to achieve total victory, but because that isn't actually possible, constructing a machine that grinds Russia into a years-long stalemate is much more practical.
The purpose of the British government is to propose a controversial new sentencing policy, stand firm in the face of protests for a while, then cave in after slightly larger protests and agree not to pass the policy after all.
Again, perhaps too specific, but yeah, the purpose of the British government is approximately this. If your model of the British government was that it was entirely to serve the British people, you'd come away with a worse model than the guy that looks at this outcome and concludes that this is pretty much what the system is for.
The purpose of the New York bus system is to emit four billion pounds of carbon dioxide.
This one is just sleight of hand - the purpose of the bus system is to move a whole bunch of people, and it does exactly that. If the objection is just that systems also have externalities that doesn't really seem like it's actually arguing with the central thesis of POSIWID.
Scott's central examples of how wrong POSIWID is are all things that I think are tolerably good examples of how POSIWID is a better model of reality that listening to people tell you what a system is supposed to do. If you look at the outcomes, you'll get some reasonable understanding of what the system is constructed to do.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
20d ago
Even without a motor, cycling is just much more dangerous per mile than being in car for obvious reasons. Make a mistake in a car at 20 MPH and you're in for an annoying morning. Make the same mistake on a bike and your life is in jeopardy. Worse still, it doesn't even have to be your mistake. One of the best things that ever happened to my future self was getting T-boned by someone that ran a stop sign and hit me when I was driving a small car in my early 20s - real lesson in the fact that you can just be minding your own business and have your life changed by some reckless idiot.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
25d ago
From what I can tell, most of the accusations here are very minor, though. Using immigration laws to sidestep due process is wrong, though.
In many of these conversations, the term "due process" is doing a ton of work that isn't consistent with my understanding of it. Without looking anything up and prior to these arguments, if someone asked me what "due process" meant, I think I would have said that it refers to having a clear and legible legal standard that can't be circumvented to achieve an end goal. That doesn't actually mean that it must take particularly long, that there is no discretion involved, and that there must be some remedy to having it executed. In the case of the Hamas-sympathetic immigrants, I do not interpret "due process" as meaning that they're entitled to anything other than the explicitly laid out statutory considerations, which include discretion for removal at the behest of the Secretary of State's judgment. That's it, that's the due process, it's that when you're a non-citizen in the United States, the Secretary of State has discretion for your removal. If you think that's a bad law, that's fine, but the law exists and was passed legitimately by the United States Congress and signed into law by the President.
As a matter of principle, I am completely fine with the due process leading to deportation being pretty short and shallow. You just don't have any actual right to live in countries that you're not a citizen of (Schengen and other arrangements notwithstanding). If the host country simply thinks you're really annoying, they can tell you to leave.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1mo ago
Yes, those are also examples of positions that people hold that empirical evidence won't move them off of. Some of that may be because they don't think the evidence is compelling, but most of it is that these just aren't questions that are amenable to rigorous testing.
I think there are good non-empirical arguments for why transing children is a terrible idea (and people have made them in this thread) but I don't expect them to be compelling to strict utilitarians, particularly the utilitarians that are credulous about any institution that cloaks itself in the aesthetics of science. If my position depended on whether some shoddy, non-replicating study is consistent with it or not, I think that would be much thinner than reaching conclusions from considering the situation with the context of history and human nature.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1mo ago
I'll bite that bullet - my opposition to gender transitioning prepubescent children does not hinge on science and I would not be convinced by studies that purported to show that it's actually very good for children. Many questions are good questions to apply the scientific method to and I don't think this is one of them.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1mo ago
People vastly overestimate the percentage of government expenditures are on various things that I would personally prefer to zero out. If they were right, the benefits of zeroing those things out would be much, much larger than what I hope for.
I mean, in the context of the Olympics, it's a high bar. I guess these days it's sub-27 for men and sub-30 for women for it to be considered a fast race.
In general conversation, I would probably call someone "fast" if they could go sub-35. I suspect that my definition works pretty much the same as yours though - that's "fast" because it's faster than me rather than it being relative to a given percentage of the population. For reference, I haven't run a 10K in a couple years, but split the first 10K of my last half marathon at 38 minutes and continued at the same pace for the rest of the race (on a fairly hill course). Other recent race results suggest that I'd run 36-low on a good day on a fast course or track. I'd probably agree that the most common spot for people in the hobby running community to start calling someone "fast" is BQ or equivalent speeds at shorter distances - sub-18 5K, sub-38 10K, sub-3 marathon are probably pretty common numbers.
To be a bit corny, I don't like to call people slow as long as they're trying. It's all so relative, we're all working towards goals, and I'm behind too many people by too much to feel good about calling other people slow. That said, if someone demanded that I tell them whether I think they're slow, I'd probably say that a healthy young male that can't crack 50 minutes is slow.
For all numbers adjust by ~11-12% for women.
Good luck on getting a BQ!
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1mo ago
Well, as long as we're on the topic of innumeracy and poor estimation skills, I actually do still feel a moment of surprise when I realize I'm interacting with someone that's missing such a basic and core experience. It's one of those things that I know intellectually is some relevant percentage of the populace, but it's still surprising to encounter. This is a similar sort of thing to realizing that you might have been arguing with a 13-year-old about something.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1mo ago
I smoke cigars, generally about once a week when the weather is nice during the summer. The nicotine is a pleasant part of the experience and that usage pattern does not cause any apparent compulsion to consume more. I probably wouldn't bother with a product that was just nicotine without the tobacco, but I'm also just not much of a drug guy in general.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1mo ago
American trade representative Jameison Greer is the name I've seen thrown around for who they might have thought it was. That might still be too charitable - the simplest explanation is that many people just don't really look all that closely at who else is on a group chat. You would kind of hope that some measure of care would be taken when we're talking about sensitive information, but people just get used to what they're doing and don't think about it much.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1mo ago
I mean, on the one hand, I can't recall the last time I actually watched the Olympics either. On the other hand, you are rarely comparing similar numbers here either. If it's some track event, all the men's times will be clustered, and then all the women's times will be clustered say, 30% slower. You aren't comparing decimal places here. Even casual observers should notice.
It's only ~10-12% for running events and once you get to anything other than 100 meters the numbers aren't things that are going to be intuitive to the average person. There aren't very many people that know how long a 1500m race takes to run off the top of their heads.
This isn't to defend the author's studied obliviousness to easily observed realities, just saying that I bet most people would have no idea if a 10K time was fast or slow from a quick look at the corner of the screen.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1mo ago
At recess I read books. I opted out of gym as much as possible, it was humiliating and vulgar. The only post-puberty phys ed class I was forced to take was sex segregated so I wouldn't have had any opportunity to see differences. In earlier gym classes I didn’t look around much. Why would I? Are people comparing themselves to see how many jumping jacks they can do? I just wanted it to be done with.
This seems to be pretty much the universal experience of people that advocate for trans participation in women's sports. They have no idea how large the gaps are between men and women because they have somehow managed to take pride in avoiding anything to do with physical fitness. I guess I can kind of, sort of squint and see how that happens, but the part I don't understand is their willingness to jump into arguments about a topic that they just don't care about at all.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1mo ago
I'm not sure exactly where the line is, but I think it stops well short of organizing building occupations like Mahmoud did. I don't really care what their cause is, foreigners that organize the occupation of university buildings should be deported.
At this time, it's not clear what exactly this girl did; it seems likely to be much closer to any reasonable line than the Mahmoud example. The administration testing where the line is does concern me.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1mo ago
A Venn diagram, also called a set diagram or logic diagram, shows all possible logical relations between a finite collection of different sets. These diagrams depict elements as points in the plane, and sets as regions inside closed curves. A Venn diagram consists of multiple overlapping closed curves, usually circles, each representing a set. The points inside a curve labelled S represent elements of the set S, while points outside the boundary represent elements not in the set S. This lends itself to intuitive visualizations; for example, the set of all elements that are members of both sets S and T, denoted S ∩ T and read "the intersection of S and T", is represented visually by the area of overlap of the regions S and T.[1]
In Venn diagrams, the curves are overlapped in every possible way, showing all possible relations between the sets. They are thus a special case of Euler diagrams, which do not necessarily show all relations. Venn diagrams were conceived around 1880 by John Venn. They are used to teach elementary set theory, as well as illustrate simple set relationships in probability, logic, statistics, linguistics, and computer science.
A Venn diagram in which the area of each shape is proportional to the number of elements it contains is called an area-proportional (or scaled) Venn diagram.
If you're going to be pedantic, at least be right! The complaint that I should have said "an area-proportional Venn diagram would have an almost complete overlap" is just about maximally pointless.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1mo ago
I'm personally willing to bite the bullet and say that I think foreign nationals should generally avoid making themselves part of American politics.
American statute is not stagnant. It certainly doesn't line up with what I'd like but plenty gets done.
Wealthy people that cleared the early years never had particularly low life expectancies. The average age in the American Senate at the moment is indeed shameful but it's not a product of medical advances.
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