cjet79
Anarcho Capitalist on moral grounds
Libertarian Minarchist on economic grounds
User ID: 124
cjet79
1yr ago
Low to no usefulness.
To be a useful survey question of economists, a question needs to:
- Be very limited in scope
- Have a clear preference in how the economists answer (i.e. Strongly agree or Strongly disagree clearly wins)
- Not be a rephrased basic econ question (I will caveat that this is maybe useful sometimes)
Given those limitations not all the survey questions are useful.
Many of them have a huge scope like asking "would regulation of x industry be [good]". That becomes basically a vibes questions about how you feel about regulation in general. Even the staunchest libertarian leaning economist can acknowledge regulation is sometimes helpful. And even the staunchest statist pro-regulator out there can acknowledge that some regulations are harmful. So the question really becomes 'what quality of regulation do you think is likely'.
If the economists don't clearly come down on one side of the question, then you are back to a foundational problem of "how do you know which experts to trust if the experts disagree with each other?" This seems useful for someone that wants to organize a panel discussion between economists that disagree with each other, but less useful if you are just a pleb trying to figure out what the experts say on a topic.
Sometimes there are questions about price movements, or supply and demand movements. You can predict what economists will say by understanding a basic econ 101 textbook. You'll typically see fewer "uncertain" answers for these questions. It is maybe useful to have a professional economist interpret a current political problem and translate the econ 101 rules for everyone. But I do believe that people can do this for themselves. And typically when they fail to make this translation it is because they willfully don't want it to be true, and no amount of expert consensus will get through to them.
https://www.kentclarkcenter.org/surveys/women-and-the-labor-market/
Question A: By enabling women’s life choices about education, work and family, the contraceptive pill made a substantial contribution to closing gender gaps in the labor market for professionals. Weighted response: 48% strongly agree, 52% agree.
Question B: Gender gaps in today’s labor market arise less from differences in educational and occupational choices than from the differential career impact of parenthood and social norms around men's and women’s roles in childrearing. Weighted response: 19% strongly agree, 74% agree, 8% uncertain.
Question C: The gender gap in pay would be substantially reduced if firms had fewer incentives to offer disproportionate rewards to individuals who work long and/or inflexible hours. Weighted response: 17% strongly agree, 70% agree, 13% uncertain.
I'll go through this survey on their website to demonstrate.
Question A: (rephrased basic econ question) If you take someone out of the labor force for a few years will they be paid more or less than someone that continued to work during that time? Obviously they will be paid less. Ok, what would be the effect of them not leaving the labor force at all. They would be paid the same.
Question B: (not limited in scope, agreement slightly unclear) It is comparing two treatment effects and asking which one is bigger. This can be very misleading: Treatment A might be huge, while treatment B might only be large. Or Treatment A is small, while treatment B is non-existent. In both cases the economist would answer the same. In this specific question you can go to the comments and find that while they think Treatment A is bigger, many seem to think Treatment B matters too.
Question C: (Agreements slightly unclear, This may be a useful one) I do think the economists didn't read the question very closely, or else there is an interpretation of "substantially" that I don't understand. This type of regulation would only address one of the things that cause a difference in pay for mothers vs not-mothers. And quite a few economists said in the previous example, that educational and occupational choices still matter. What this question is implying through the answer and the other survey responses: There is a gender pay gap. This gender pay gap has at least two major causes (educational and occupational choices vs parenthood and social norms around men's and women’s roles in childrearing). A partial solution for only one of the more major causes will substantially cause the gender pay gap to close. Removing the word "substantially" from the question would remove my objection, but it would also render the question much closer to a basic econ question.
cjet79
1yr ago
After I read this post I brought this up in the real world with my friends and family as a fun topic for conversation. Thanks for writing it up!
cjet79
1yr ago
This is the third top level comment in a row on the same topic. Not everyone wants to discuss this topic, it is generally a courtesy to keep a single topic of discussion to a single top level thread. If a current news event topic is way too large (like the Ukraine war, or the Israel-gaza war) then we will try and create a separate thread dedicated just to that topic.
@iprayiam3 and @Frequent_Anybody2984 please try and follow this courtesy for others users.
cjet79
1yr ago
One of my Wife's best friends passed away this last weekend, she was 8 months pregnant, her baby boy was lost as well. She had a 3 year old daughter and husband that survived her. It originally sounded like it might have been a pregnancy complication, but some news stories I found through sleuthing suggest it was a fatal car crash.
It has been rough on my Wife processing it all. She cried the whole night when she found out. And since then I've found her sobbing in the middle of the day as some errant thought or piece of news reminds her of it all.
I knew the woman that passed away. Hung out with her a dozen times. She was in our wedding party. We went to her wedding. She was nice, a bit of a boring conversation partner, but a good friend to my wife.
I feel ... almost nothing. The only time I shed tears was when I had some particularly vivid imagery of this scenario occurring to me. Selfish tears. I do feel a little sad for my wife going through this all, but that is the extent of my emotion.
When my grandfather passed away a month or two ago, I also felt very little, I thought it was cuz his death wasn't very tragic (he was 90 and lived a very long happy life).
Is this normal? I've noticed plenty of guys around me can also be a bit unbothered by death, while most women seem to be physically pained when hearing the circumstances.
cjet79
1yr ago
One of my good friends from college has a brother that is schizo in the US. They are at their wits end dealing with him. They are Indian and have been considering flying him to India and having him committed to an institution there. For various reasons it is mostly impossible to permanently involuntarily commit a person to a mental institute in the united states.
It does seem like one of the worst possible mental disorders to have. One of my Dad's best friends (lets call him Mark) had a son that was schizo. Mark was stabbed on two different occasions by his son, before his son eventually committed suicide. I have a cousin (Adam) who is potentially schizo, and has become very religious. I yelled at my Dad, cuz my Dad was talking with Adam and dropped that I'm an Atheist. Like do you want me to get stabbed Dad?
Anyways, good job, and best of luck in that line of work.
cjet79
1yr ago
It's hard to tell if they backed into those rules, or they created a path to get to those rules. It's kind of like evolutionary psychology, where you can tell a just so story to fit what you observe. There isn't much new psychology evolving so it's hard to know how much predictive ability it has. Likewise there isn't much common law arising these days.
Public choice has at least one area where it can be repeatedly tested: elections.
cjet79
1yr ago
They had some overlap for sure. The law and econ stuff sometimes got too close to straight philosophy for my taste. Public choice was ultimately grounded in making predictions about politicians and political outcomes.
cjet79
1yr ago
most scientific communities and governments in the developed world, even ones in countries that are each others' enemies,
The response to the great Barrington declaration suggested to me that this consensus was manufactured. I also think the US government hands out a majority of infectious disease research money. So the impression of an independent international scientific community is misleading. Wuhan lab reviewed funding multiple times from the US.
treat climate change as a somewhat serious threat
I don't believe they treat it as a serious threat at all. I think they treat as an excuse for economic control. If they treated it seriously there are sub trillion dollar solutions that they could implement: sulfur dioxide seeding in the upper atmosphere, or a large sun shade in outer space.
cjet79
1yr ago
I preferred Micro. If I had any specialty it would have been public choice.
Macro is dark wizardy
cjet79
1yr ago
It's possible to spend too much on security and to spend too little. I think the US is massively over spending.
cjet79
1yr ago
On the matter of COVID death rates, it depends on whether you are considering the initial claims of CFR in the first few months, or the more reasonable values that emerged later down the line. A 0.1-0.5% CFR seems reasonable enough to me, at least until the vaccines came out.
I think the lack of testing available combined with us not knowing how to treat it led to artificially inflated death rates. And then for a while afterwards many hospitals and medical orgs were given money for COVID cases and deaths, so they of course started reporting it more heavily.
Wait. Aren't you an economist or trained in the field? It deeply concerns me that you too are forced to belief the last claim, but then again you economists are a contentious lot, each content to claim the other is ruining a noble field.
Undergrad economics degree. Mostly gave me a sense that there are weird academic holdouts on obscure topics that aren't corrupted by politics. But anything that politics touches becomes corrupted.
cjet79
1yr ago
I studied economics between 2009-2013. It was a contentious time for economics. I don't trust an expert just because they have a PhD in economics, but I think some basics of the field have held up really well. And I think the field in general has robust data gathering and adversarial checking of data.
cjet79
1yr ago
I blame Fauci.
Its hard to come out of Covid without some sense that "the science lies to us". I generally like to trust experts, but now it constantly feels like a slight level of uncertainty has crept into all my interactions with experts. The idea of an entire group of academics capture by a single interest group and willing to lie to our faces ... no longer seems very far fetched. At most you'll get a couple of the experts that defect and say all of their colleagues are wrong.
What it often requires me to do is to go look at the data the experts have, rather than what they say about their own data. At which point I get frustrated about even having experts in the first place. I usually have to rely on other smart people that I actually trust to go and check the data.
Things where I am suspicious about what the experts say:
- Lockdowns
- Covid vaccines in the young
- Death rates of covid
- What the "intelligence community" says about political things
- Runaway global warming
- Economists on the topic of currency
Since Fauci isn't really being punished for any lies, I can assume most experts picked up on the hint: say what we want you to say and you'll be protected.
I still tend to have a lot of trust for economists, but that is maybe because I have found economists I actually trust, and I don't read the economists that would ruin my trust.
I can believe that we are in a great economic period right now. Nothing in my life suggests anything is great or terrible economically, so its not hard to think that either scenario is possible. There are multiple measures of employment, and I really wish news orgs would just report the full table of employment measures, U1-U7 (if I remember correctly). I feel like any one of them is potentially misleading individually, but altogether they give a great picture.
I have a very hard time trusting economists related to currency. The topic has always seemed like black magic to me. There is a joke among the academics I work with that monetary economists are always a bit on the weird side. I personally feel that its because monetary economics is a bit like studying cthulu. Simply witnessing it and understanding it drives you a little crazy. Also if there is any place where apparatus of government control has an incentive to get economists to lie, then that place is gonna be monetary economics. You simply cannot have modern sized governments without currency manipulation and money printing. I don't think they tend to lie too often about inflation numbers, or I at least believe that the numbers they give are consistently measured. Its more of a big giant lie that I worry about, rather than tiny lies to benefit one specific administration.
cjet79
1yr ago
Your typical globalist-hater doesn't understand that America's wealth comes from being the only global superpower.
It is simply not true that being a global superpower has made America wealthy. Walterodim points out the obvious historical evidence that invalidates this. But also being a global superpower is a wealth sink not a wealth faucet.
Being wealthy is about having more stuff, and having services. It is strange to think that diverting wealth towards making items that destroy things (less stuff), and kill people (fewer services) would somehow make us wealthier.
The American economic engine operates well despite being hitched to the responsibilities of a global superpower, not because of it.
cjet79
1yr ago
Charlottesville isn't a part of Northern Virginia.
It's got some standard southern city dynamics going on. Most of the city population itself is black. The county that surrounds it, the college (UVA), and most of the rich people are white.
The city is a separate political entity from the county. So you often get a very extreme liberal core in the city. And it has no brakes. I grew up in the surrounding county, and this sort of racial politicking has been happening for decades. City council members get elected by finding and igniting racial grievances. Most of the time people just ignore them. It was probably their dream come true for this to be a flashpoint for the nation.
From what I have heard, similar things happen in Richmond and Atlanta and other large southern cities.
Northern Virginia is strange in that the population of their cities are not predominantly black. (aside from DC, where similar racial politicking takes place). Usually the newer a city the more functional the political system is within that city.
cjet79
1yr ago
It's a problem of the boy who called wolf. Yes, we know there are real wolves. But you can't cry wolf anytime someone's 4 legged fury pet walks by your front door.
The analogy of course breaks down because different news events have different relevance to different people.
A hurricane is a real event with real danger, but if it's only gonna hit Florida I really don't need to hear about it. But people in Florida do need to hear about it!
I get that the differentiation is difficult. But I think the news channels (and their consumers) tend to prefer stories with drastic consequences and minimal reach over stories with minimal consequences and large reach.
I work with people that get on Fox news and talk about inflation. They get bumped all the time for updates about the latest scandal, or Trump Trial, or a war in country that most people can't find on a map.
cjet79
1yr ago
no evidence.
- You are comically well informed about Nazi's and anti-Jewish groups. It is not typical to be very well informed about people you disagree with. It happens only in a few circumstances. If the people you disagree with have saturated the media, and you can't help but know their positions, faces, and strongholds. Almost anyone that is politically aware knows the standard positions of the Republican and Democratic parties. But to know the names, articles, and websites of the Greens, Libertarians, or Communists, it usually means you are one of them.
- You pattern match the behavior of people with forbidden views. You delete all your old posts. You have an isolated account that only deals on this single topic and you never say anything personally identifiable. That is not the behavior of someone unafraid to have their posts connected with a real identity. And I don't buy the "I'm afraid I will be targetted by violent Nazis for the things I say." You barely say anything controversial against them, at most you basically say "I disagree with them". But nearly everyone does. So if they wanted to go violently kill people who disagree with them, they could just walk into any public place. If they wanted to go after a powerful target, it wouldn't be you, it would be an actual politician or business person.
- You platform Nazi positions. You go and read their stuff and then share it here. I can't describe how much of a disconnect that is with most "anti-nazis". As a forum and formerly a subreddit, our main complaint from people has always been that we provide a platform for real Nazis. The best way to describe how weird this is: we find it far more plausible that you are an actual Nazi, then you are an anti-nazi that wants to platform their views. Nazis are rare enough to begin with, the fact that we have two here is probably mostly a result of them being bounced off of just about every other online non-nazi forum out there.
To other readers this might beg the question 'why are you telling them all the signs that they are a troll'. In short, I'd like better quality trolls. To expand on that, this is a discussion forum that benefits from unique viewpoints. Its a place for people to work through ideas and sometimes current events with those that they strongly disagree. A good user brings good discussion and has interesting views. A perfectly disguised troll brings good discussion and has interesting views. The only difference in the amount of good they bring is that the good user might actually be enjoying their experience, a perfectly disguised troll is ... well they might be enjoying their time too, so maybe there is no difference. At worst they are just wasting their own time.
An imperfect troll that sits in the uncanny valley of belief systems, as you do, kinda breaks the illusion for everyone. They think "maybe this user is just uniquely bad at disguising their true viewpoints, and all the weird people I thought I was talking to are all fakes".
cjet79
1yr ago
personality is usually not amenable to such modification in the long run
Strong disagree on this. I'd say its hard for other people to change your personality. But you can change your own personality if you work at it long enough and want the change enough.
cjet79
1yr ago
Anyone watch the panderverse? https://youtube.com/watch?v=-tydaNlU_NI
South park, but replaced minority women complaining about the patriarchy. Very culture war obviously, but I was more curious how the comedy holds up.
cjet79
1yr ago
I think the standard advice is "don't be disagreeable".
You might have to stop yourself and think before speaking in conversations. Before you disagree make sure of these three things:
- Do you really care? If its over something stupid, just drop it.
- Will disagreeing accomplish anything? If no, then you probably should stop caring about it.
- If I will accomplish something by disagreeing, will it be better than this person potentially not liking me temporarily?
You should also learn how to disagree without being disagreeable. Don't say "That fact is wrong, because I know counter-factual X to be true". Instead say "Huh, I didn't know that, I'd always heard counter-fact X".
Finally, stop hanging around other disagreeable people, it rubs off. If its your family, seek therapy, and possibly lessen contact.
cjet79
1yr ago
It is rather annoying how certain activists have destroyed the meaning of the word. I used to really dislike being called racist, because I had the association with item 1. Now I just kind of sigh and think to myself "welp I guess they wanted to end the conversation". For many non-leftists the term has basically come to mean "a person the left doesn't like". I suppose your definition is more nuanced, but it amounts to the same thing.
It does make me a little more hopeful in a weird way. Language can only be abused so much, and only for relatively short term gains. And often at the expense of long-term progress. Genuine "I hate X race" type people can now get relatively far in politics, either by hating the correct race, or by the fact that the accusation of racism has been so overused that no one treats it seriously anymore. For anyone who actually cares about racism this is undeniably a bad thing. For anyone that was just using it as a weapon to bludgeon their opponents, well they probably benefited overall, but the weapon has become more and more useless. No one even bothers calling Trump racist anymore, but for anyone that doesn't remember it was thrown around quite a bit back in 2016.
cjet79
1yr ago
One potential problem of assessing any levels of platform stability, is that most large tech companies have incredibly strict starting standards for tech uptime and reliability, so sometimes even a 10x or even 100x change in platform stability might still be completely unnoticeable to a regular end user. Imagine a platform going from 1 minute of downtime a year to 100 minutes. Even 1000 minutes of downtime might be hard to notice depending on when it happens and for what features it happens to.
However, someone is usually going to notice some downtime, and Musk owning the platform meant that bugs on twitter suddenly became newsworthy events, rather than things everyone would just ignore and not care about. So even if overall bugs and uptime remained the same, there might easily be a large change in the number of news stories and people's level of awareness of those bugs.
I would not be surprised if platform stability got significantly worse, but also that most tech companies overspend on platform stability as a point of professional pride and bragging rights. So whether you notice is probably determined by whether you follow bad news about twitter, or how much you blow up the importance of the one or two rare downtime incidents you personally encounter.
But you both basically caused the original thread to fall further. Id get it more if there were like five other posts that buried the original discussion, but there aren't.
The sort by new means that your post would have been second if you had both just posted in the original topic. Does being the second post from the top really make you feel like a thread is buried?
And there is a slippery slope problem here. If you two do it, what if everyone that responds to you also just chooses to post at the top level? The threading becomes a useless feature. Your thread gets buried even faster than normal, and no one is happy.
Three posts on one topic isn't bad for readability, but breaking a suggested rule twice in a row is bad for the legibility of suggested rules. I specifically do not want people to see these two courtesy violations and think "ah I should do that too".
There is nothing wrong with reviving a dead topic from last week.
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