cjet79
Anarcho Capitalist on moral grounds
Libertarian Minarchist on economic grounds
User ID: 124
cjet79
9hr ago
I mostly agree with your viewpoint, but the alien enthusiasts have a simple explanation for the visitation pattern: nuclear weapons.
This would also explain ongoing secrecy about Aliens. If the Aliens have any degree of control over nuclear arsenals, then part of the illusion of world powers is shattered.
I do think we have had unusually good luck in that nuclear weapons have been used exactly twice in a real conflict and then never again.
cjet79
1d ago
First one was just a simple table. Haven't built any charts yet, but thinking about Tableau because one potential gig I know about wants to use them
cjet79
2d ago
I was thinking more public policy oriented data sets. Right now I'm looking at using TaxFoundations state tax data, that might get me some interesting stuff. I also know a potential contractor position where I can help someone create table or chart to display homelessness across different states.
cjet79
2d ago
I lost my job this Monday. Officially my job was outsourced to contractors. But I feel the bigger problem is I had no political cover.
I have a suspicion that the contractors that replaced me might have paid off an employee on the inside. It feels so paranoid to say that, but people also told me I was paranoid 9 months ago when these contractors were hired. Once I was kicked out and the contractors were in the employee that I think they paid off left the same day.
My initial emotions were close to relief. The axe that was hanging over my head finally dropped. Now there is some mix of anger and resignation. I feel like I am often on the losing side of office politics. Some of my anger has me wanting to get back at the organization's president, I've heard rumors of him being an unwitting Russian or Hungarian asset. Which would be funnier if it wasn't so real.
Doing alright now, thinking of doing contracting work in the near future.
cjet79
3d ago
I built a state tax burden calculator with react.
I was thinking I want to build more little form and graph things, but the main limitation is data, anyone have any good clean datasets they know about?
cjet79
4d ago
Simple economics.
Labor unions compete with compete with non-union labor.
You can compare the economic effects of most unions to something like a plague that kills only teenagers or inexperienced workers.
Any employer in that situation would try to keep their current employees, possibly pay them more, or provide other non-monetary side benefits to keep them.
But there is an obvious loser in both situations: the teenagers and inexperienced workers.
An anonymous online forum would actually allow the teenagers and inexperienced workers to anti-coordinate with the striking workers. What's a great time to walk in and get a job ... The same day half the workers are no shows.
cjet79
4d ago
There was at some point issues like that. Nowadays its more true that if something is releasing radiation, it can be used as a nuclear fuel source.
Similar concept with engines and biofuels. Early engines and modern hyper focused engines need clean perfect fuel for burning. Then along comes the diesel engine, and the fuel requirement is instead more like "will it burn". My loose understanding is that modern nuclear plant designs are closer to diesel engines.
Storage of nuclear waste fuel is not difficult, unless you choose to make it difficult. Which is what the environmental lobby has been trying to do for a long time.
cjet79
4d ago
The political problem with Nuclear shows one of the main problems with democracy.
When downside risk is a single major event, and not lots of spread out minor events than it becomes a lot more important in people's minds. Even when the costs of the minor events adds up to more than the costs of the major event.
This is clear on a bunch of metrics with nuclear, where the radiation released from a nuclear plant is less than the radiation released by a typical coal fired plant. Other metrics like deaths, safety incidents, spills, and particulate pollution are all the same.
cjet79
6d ago
They will often tell us why they have left, and none have given us that as a reason. Usually it's complaints about low quality comments that don't quite break the rules, but are bad enough to annoy them when aggragated together.
Im fine dropping this, I did feel like new things were coming up.
cjet79
7d ago
The mods all talk. Netstack ask us to come by and check this. And noticeably Netstack only said not to do it. Which is basically the minimum level of "mod action" that we can take. It is impossible to be softer.
I don't think as many people would be apprehensive about it if every time this came up there wasn't a cadre of posters making it sound like we have super strict requirements for top level posts.
Doing it after we have warned you not to do it isn't treated very well, but same with most rules.
cjet79
7d ago
And here's mine: it would look much like the weekly thread on /r/blockedandreported, only better because the quality of commentators here is higher.
Or it would eventually look exactly like that thread or worse, because:
- The higher quality of commentators would leave
- Everyone would put in less effort.
- And we don't have a popular podcast that draws in a stream of new and active users.
Dude, this whole discussion started because a "rather well-written" effort post received a warning. You are definitely setting the bar too high.
A well-written thing that is not a discussion is still not a discussion. The bar is not high. In this case they went and climbed at a neighboring gym and put in a bunch of effort, but the bar we were monitoring which is much easier to reach was left empty.
cjet79
7d ago
No I think my model is pretty similar to yours.
Specifically:
My model is a different one: quality posts happen because a poster gets inspired by an ongoing discussion.
My model is only different in that I strongly emphasize that last word. Bare links do not count as discussion. A story that amounts to "people I don't like did a bad thing" is not a discussion.
We specifically ask that top level posts start a discussion. It does not have to be a high quality post. It just has to start a discussion. I've said before and given examples that it is possible to start a discussion here in three sentences.
Context. Interpretation. Opinion.
We ask that people not clog up the board with non-discussion.
cjet79
7d ago
Also cult like experiences can be really awesome for a lot of the participants. In fact it can be so awesome that they end up doing crazy things with the cult. A semi controlled environment where you can join a temporary cult sounds great.
cjet79
7d ago
Lots of things were different back then. We were on reddit and the culture war was red hot and banned in a bunch of other places. And there are also places like culturewarroundup that allow bare links and they are far deader than theschism. If anything the comparison suggests theschism strategy is a better viable long-term option. Neither us or them can compete with X in terms of sheer content of bare links and subjects being discussed. But we can compete on enforcing some minimum quality standards.
Look, I know this is a lost cause. But I wish you guys would at least acknowledge the point about low effort top posts leading to high effort comments.
I feel like I've never disagreed with this point. I might have even said somewhere that it is easy for bad quality comments to generate good discussion. But I also feel it suggests that you are entirely missing the point I am making.
I think our actual disagreement is on the effect of permissive top level comments. You seem to think it's positive sum. I think it is neutral sum, or possibly a little negative sum.
We are generally getting a similar number of high quality comments each month. And that amount is limited by the number of users.
The people that write quality comments have told me before that they like having their comments read and discussed. I also share that preference. Its rare for me to want to type out a quality comment that is just going to get buried and read by only one person.
The place where you get the most attention and discussion is at the top level. That attention is limited by how many top level comments are above you, and how recently that thing has been discussed. Bare links fill up the top comment slots and bury posts faster. And you can easily get your topic sniped before you finish writing a quality comment.
I don't even understand your mechanism for how permissive top comments increase the number of quality comments. I understand how it increases total comments, but that isn't something I care about.
cjet79
8d ago
Its news you find interesting. But if others find it boring or distracting then a conversation about it doesn't add to their enjoyment of the site. For example I am interested in tech news but very uninterested in foreign policy. The whole war in Gaza is less interesting to me than Amazon's return to office policy. If this thread was 10 times bigger with the same quality writing but all about foreign policy then it would be no better for me.
We don't have unlimited people producing unlimited content like X does. Every time I read your complaints that seems to be a built in assumption, that the lack of top level content holds people back from the total amount they post. I just don't see it personally. I'm limited in how much quality content I can write. Probably only a few good comments a day.
I would love to have more people here posting more quality content. If we as mods got overwhelmed with moderating we would add more moderators as we've done in the past. An unlimited amount of low quality content is useless.
I don't buy your point that it is a conflict of interest. As a user I also hate low quality content, because it's crap that I have to filter through to get to the good stuff. X and Facebook and YouTube are all unusable to me. Too much crap, not enough gold. And I'm only a user on those websites, not a moderator.
cjet79
8d ago
I am also sounding like a broken record, but people often miss the point of the rule against bare links:
Interesting discussion is why we are here. Dictating the particular topic of discussion is a privilege and a benefit that we like see awarded to those who also bring interesting discussion.
Certain things can generate interesting discussions without actually being interesting discussions.
Low effort bare links are one of those things. Posting things that amount to "Can you believe what Those People did this week?" is another one of those things. Recruiting for a cause is one of those things. A brand new major news item is one of those things.
It is in fact not hard at all to generate interesting discussions when you try and make the main purpose of a forum be a place that allows for discussion. Getting other people to generate a discussion here is not hard. Writing quality stuff that other people want to read is hard. We are not trying to reward generating a discussion, we are trying to reward people that make the effort to write quality stuff.
One of the few levers we have for that is saying that 'only people that are trying to do the hard thing of writing quality stuff get to pick the topic for discussion'.
Or in cases where there is definitely going to be discussion about a major news item, but maybe only one threads worth, there is some value in being the first poster because you get to set the tone and focus of the discussion. We would again rather award someone with an effortful and thoughtful take on the issue than the first person to copy and paste the link from X.
I'd rather us die as TheMotte then live on to just become a crappy version of every other social media platform out there.
cjet79
8d ago
I'm aware and agree that metoo often removes female agency.
I'd say I was aiming my disagreement at users on this forum that think this is a terrible practice. So it's not a given that they support me too or don't believe in female agency.
cjet79
8d ago
I have a female cousin that lives in the south I could easily imagine going through this and being highly successful at it. In the sense that she will excel at the fashion, the making friends, and the finding a marriage partner before she leaves college. She won't be forced into this type of situation, it will likely be because she strongly desires it. She has an older sister who went the route of "super nerd goes to college early for physics and math, and immediately gets high paying job right out of college". So its not the family pressuring her into it either.
The reactions of other posters here describing this as hellish and horrible (@quiet_NaN and @Stefferi) kind of confuse me. I see this as a quintessential human activity. Its a socially competitive and cooperative activity, forming tribal bonds, creating a larger group culture through fashion, searching for mates, and navigating a different world as you grow into full adulthood and autonomy. I also understand that I would be bad at this activity, or at best just mediocre. I'm a guy so that certainly puts me at a major handicap for sororities. But I skipped out on greek life and most parties in general while in college. I was never a social butterfly and struggled into my mid twenties with conveying and receiving proper social ques.
The restrictions on sexual promiscuity seem designed to overcome "race to the bottom" situations. Which is something that girls might want. If two girls are going after the same guy, and one girl puts out first, then she might easily win a close competition. The incentive turns towards putting out as fast as possible. Before the girl herself is ever comfortable doing so. But if all girls put out too easily then guys might not have a reason to settle down. The standard set of rules in any situation like this is to ban behavior that encourages the race to the bottom, and then punish defectors. The punishment here is social ostracization.
As someone who has "done the time, but not the crime" when it comes to social ostracization I don't get the big deal. It sucks in the moment to be socially ostracized, but long term you can find new social groups and ultimately move on. Its certainly better than the punishments in what I'd consider "backwards" civilizations where they might throw acid on your face, stone you to death, shove you into a religious sisterhood organization against your will, or some other form of heinous community execution.
Ultimately I think the voluntary or involuntary nature of this activity is where people get hung up. If its fully involuntary it does indeed seem hellish. But to consider it involuntary you have to basically remove all assumptions of agency from these young women. That they had no other college options, that they could only pick from the sororities that strictly enforce this social competition, and that they cannot slightly pull back once inside the competition to a level where they are comfortable. I think it is either voluntary every step of the way, or its a learning experience for them about the dangers of allowing the expectations of others to dictate your life decisions. There are far worse ways to learn that lesson.
cjet79
9d ago
I was reminded of an old Scott Alexander post about how to handle the culture war. It was basically have two different elections, one election is just for the culture war and one election is just for hard policy stuff. And don't allow people to vote in both.
It was one of those "out-there" ideas that get tossed out so you can just think about things from a new perspective. But it seems it was prescient in a way. What we have with this latest election is almost that exact division. Where the presidential candidates are almost pure culture war outgrowths. And the Vice presidential candidates are these policy oriented wonks.
cjet79
11d ago
This isn't a very good comment on multiple dimensions.
All it really adds to the discussion is a negative sentiment towards leftists. Which the previous comment already has, but expresses it in a more interesting way and adds additional detail.
Its a mix of building consensus, low effort, antagonistic, and waging the culture war. Next time just upvote the comment you like and move on.
cjet79
12d ago
I haven't been single in over a decade. I remember the norm being to split the bill, I'd sometimes pick it up as the guy. If I picked it up though there was more of an expectation that something physical was happening later. I also tended to date professional working women. It was a point of pride for them that they did not need me to pay for their date.
The other thing I remember was going on "reverse dates" basically one of us went to the other's place first, did some fun activities, then we went out to dinner. I might have picked up those checks more often, but I can't say with any certainty.
In terms of who asks out who, generally it was just men because they had more interest. I don't see anything wrong with a woman asking someone out.
A woman doing a marriage proposal feels very wrong. But I suppose in some specific circumstances it could make sense. Typically men are the more reluctant ones to get married. For the sake of both involved its better if the reluctant party enthusiastically signals that they are over their reluctance and ready to get married. Maybe if a man asks a woman to marry him, and the woman says no, but they continue dating then the ball should be in her court to ask him to get married. Describing and thinking of that kind of scenario doesn't feel nearly as icky as a woman just proposing first.
They might not care either way. If they only talk to or visit the people with control of the nukes, then the secret is secure that way.
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