betascience
4mo ago
Everyone dies. Protecting people from having their death pulled forward six months is only mildly socially valuable. If the opportunity costs put on the rest of society are even mildly onerous, it’s almost certainly a net loss.
betascience
1yr ago
Slightly aside from this, is there even such a thing as a biologically defined mental illness? Is there a single mental illness that’s diagnosed with a blood test or some other empirical measurement that doesn’t involve a checklist of symptoms that the patient describes to the physician?
betascience
1yr ago
I can completely understand the distaste with which the forgiveness is seen by many people, and I'm not certain that it is ideal. However, the fact that we allow young people to take on debt that is not dischargeable by bankruptcy is unconscionable to me. This is abhorrent, and essentially every religion forbids it.
And this is the true crux of the issue. The entire problem of the student loan program is built on the twin perverse incentives of the loans being non-dischargeable and guaranteed by the government. This has allowed state schools to balloon beyond their original missions and expand into administrative behemoths. It's created an industry of for-profit universities whose customers pay nothing out of pocket but are burdened with non-dischargeable debt in the hopes of improving their lot in life. It's put a millstone around the necks of young people and become one more thing people need to do before having children -- finish college, get a job, pay off loans, buy a house. I also believe it has been the essential driver of wokeism. It's been used to create and fund environments where ideas are sheltered from contact with reality and need to produce no cash value beyond seeming like a good place for students to cash their government checks. It simply cannot continue like this.
betascience
1yr ago
If your child was drafted to a war and came back with his genitals blown off and a condition requiring life long medical treatment that results in a drastically shortened lifespan it isn't fair to say he's dead, but he's certainly well on his way. Whatever life you shared before is over and new vista of terrifying possibilities has opened its stead.
betascience
1yr ago
What are you trying to get into? Data Science in general is very gatekept by formal education and you'll be competing with PhDs for most positions. It doesn't help that the job title is seen as very hot so any opening gets flooded by resumes. That said, it's not very entry level friendly and if you know a particular domain really well and are good at design and communication you can get a leg up that way. Also stats nerds are really bad at programming, so you will likely have an advantage there.
betascience
1yr ago
To the question of an effective drug counting, I would say no. I’m more concerned that there is a physiological symptom from which the supposed mental condition is diagnosable.
I’m not sure that someone having a physiological withdrawal symptom from a substance to which they’re addicted would count either as someone who is not an addict will still experience those.
The sleep disorders seem a better candidate.
betascience
4mo ago
I don’t fully understand what you’re proposing here. It doesn’t sound like a better situation for anyone involved. Is this actually two states occupying the same territory with international militaries policing it? How could this possibly be better than the present situation?
betascience
10mo ago
One thing to consider is the capture caused by network effects and interoperability. You need to use Microsoft PowerPoint because your interns know it, your clients expect it, all your old presentations are in .pptx format, etc. Sure, you may be willing to consider some alternative in theory, but someone would need to produce a competitor that is nearly 100% compatible with all of your other stuff and compete at price point that is incredibly compelling. Are you going to do it?
Another thing to consider is that there is such a thing as "value" to capture and companies are thinking about how to bring their core competencies to market while outsourcing everything else. They need an off-the-shelf product to do something that isn't their core competency and they will take the best one on the market at the time at whatever price they need to pay so long as it doesn't upset their price structure and bring their costs out of line with their strategy. An armchair philosopher can ponder for years where value and cost comes from, but if I can spend one dollar to make ten then I'm going to do it whether the thing I bought for a dollar is theoretically worth it or not.
betascience
1yr ago
I’m not seeing the “verb” version as a verb. Use it in a sentence.
betascience
1yr ago
Calling a series of factual statements a “gish gallop” is basically telling on yourself. There’s no argument here, but you’re admitting the conclusion you would draw is uncomfortable ergo assuming bad intentions.
betascience
1yr ago
Higher rates of underreporting of income is absolutely evidence of higher rates of intentional underreporting of income. It’s not proof, but it’s what you would expect to find in the case of intentional tax fraud.
betascience
4mo ago
There's a nigh infinite number of ways to approach this. I would recommend perhaps starting at the beginning of the fabulous Secret History of Western Esotericism podcast (https://shwep.net/). Christianity did not evolve in a vacuum. It's a part of western thought with roots dating back to pre-Socratic philosophy. It may benefit you to have a more complete picture of how it came to be and the issues that early Christian thinkers like Origen and Augustine wrestled with. There are as many different Christianities as there are Christians, and there is almost certainly a Christian path that is true for you.
betascience
6mo ago
Its a generational trap. The system places the burden of funding on kids that are not yet born, and couldn't have possibly voted to not have the system.
Is this not true of any store of value system? Ultimately the question of caring for the old is a question of how the resources of those that are young enough to work will be redistributed to those who are too old to work and what precisely counts as too old to work. If we allowed old people to save thing X in their productive years, protect thing X from being taken with force by those who are young enough and strong enough to do so, and thing X is then used a store of value to pay those who are young and strong for food, services, etc. then we are essentially back in the same place.
This isn't to argue for or against social security, but simply to point out that any system to care for the elderly is going to do so by using some element of coercive redistribution on the young because the scarce element is their productivity.
betascience
7mo ago
Godot's Gscript is pretty well documented and easy to learn. You'll probably find it preferable as it's what most of the community uses. Also Godot is incredibly lightweight and older machine friendly, so you'll probably find it a very good fit.
betascience
1yr ago
I’m just thinking it through out loud.
My family has a lot of mental illness of the OCD and bipolar type, and those family members insist this is a well understood science and then make claims that seem essentially religious. I’m feeling out the edges of where measurable physiological issue versus vague “chemical imbalance?” meet.
betascience
6mo ago
This strikes me as incredibly emotionally stunted. You do know that people occasionally ask their children to make grandbabies? I think the FIL can probably handle drinking a beer and talking about "how bout them Cowboys?" without being driven to distraction that his married daughter is having sex.
betascience
6mo ago
If the government ever touches the money allocated for social security.
It's actually mandated by the program that they do. It purchases treasuries. What would you have them do with it?
betascience
8mo ago
Are they basing the poverty rates on a national income cutoff rather than a local cost of living standard? I bet dollars to donuts they are, and until that's corrected for, I don't know why I'd waste additional time entertaining the argument.
betascience
8mo ago
In my experience very good student athletics are slightly smarter than the average of their peer group. Most athletic performance benefits from intelligence, whether it's anticipating the path of a ball in flight or predicting an opponents' next move. Being stupid is at the very least limiting, and for some positions and games it's disqualifying.
betascience
8mo ago
It's only strong for certain types of activities. Simple reaction time like someone throwing something at you which you bat away, it's almost nothing. Strategizing or problem solving, it's quite high. Defensive linemen probably have some of both. I'm sure it's way better to be smart than not, but much of it is using techniques and tactics on which you've drilled against techniques and tactics on which you've also drilled.
betascience
1yr ago
Traditionally class is about wealth and not having to work. By European standards that programmer is quite correct. In Europe class is about wealth and status where the status comes from not needing to do labor. In the US we are far more concerned with income and having a high status profession where the status comes from the work's social importance or implied intellectual capability. So the two systems don't neatly map onto each other.
betascience
1yr ago
How so? I’d really like to understand the logic of this position.
betascience
1yr ago
There’s far less legal ground for this than there is for student loan forgiveness. At least with regards to loan forgiveness you have the executive of the actual agency that holds the debt taking tan action that is by definition legal (if the courts say so).
The universities more or less deliver what they promise. They’re accredited to the standards of the various regional accrediting boards, and if a person attends they will receive education at that low standard.
The big issue is the lending program itself which incentivized enrolling and matriculating as many students in possible for access to the money. The government created this by incentivizing it.
betascience
1yr ago
What is “sentient thought” in this case? Like… thinking the words out loud step by step? That’s useful and really powerful but smart people also have valuable flashes of insight where they skip from a to d bypassing b and c entirely.
Is someone faking their way through a last minute work meeting while they think about what they want to eat for dinner doing sentient thought? Someone daydreaming about the new girl at work while they drive on autopilot?
What do you think happens if that state suddenly exists? Is it a democracy? What do you think the Palestians elect to do to the Jews?
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