faceh
5hr ago
Either way, communities that can't secure their elections shouldn't get their votes counted.
I see the risk factor being malicious actors throw the count off to get certain districts disqualified.
It is such an odd situation, you can't really train many 'professional' poll managers for an event that happens like one day every two years.
So we rely on volunteers with minimal training and small motivation to go above and beyond the call of duty.
It sucks that this once again seems like something trivial to do in a 'high trust' society. But as trust degrades suddenly it becomes almost intractable.
Generally speaking, I will never, ever fault somebody for putting their beliefs up for scrutiny, when they've actually made their arguments clear and aren't ignoring inconvenient data or hiding that they have a pecuniary interest in making you believe what they're saying.
Its admirable specifically because people who will ignore that it was a well reasoned, researched, and even-handed prediction about a topic of great uncertainty, and will mock it for getting details wrong while still being mostly right directionally. You take a risk to your status to try and elucidate the topic for everyone. Sure beats people trying to obsfuscate as a status play.
The thing that gets me is that OF COURSE every single AI company is actively trying to create an AGI. Whether that is what they admit or they even expect to achieve it seem irrelevant, they're acting in ways that would bring it about, and bring it at the fastest pace they can achieve.
I'd love to see someone as smart and persuasive write the definitive "AGI Never" paper, predicting when capabilities will plateau and never improve, with falsifiable metrics to compare over time. I just do not think there's an argument that can do so successfully.
faceh
1d ago
If we design a procedure that makes it trivial to give foreign powers leverage over people, then we should expect them to use it.
Well, there was a whole whole thing about Russia allegedly recruiting Trump with a pee tape or something.
The only thing that makes controlling people involved in elections valuable is the aforementioned trillions of dollars tied up in the outcomes, and of course Diplomatic/military consequences.
All the more reason to take the 'extreme' measures to secure them.
I suspect the vast majority of citizens to be honest citizens.
If you'd asked me this 10 years ago I might agree.
Nowadays, I'm not willing to say even a bare majority are.
But I do believe they respond to incentives! Be those incentives from malicious actors, foreign powers, or their own government.
I simply note that a lot of Election Officials don't have strong incentives for good behavior, and its probably insufficient to 'reward' good behavior on their part.
Which leaves...
Reading the link, most of what happened in Broward County in 2018 is standard-issue incompetence causing waste and delay, but not affecting the ballots.
Yes.
And if the incompetence is significant enough, that's precisely where someone would hide the fraud.
The money quote literally says:
"we are unable to provide assurance over the accuracy of the November 2018 election results as reported.”
Add that to the issue:
"Half of Broward County’s election precincts reported more ballots cast than the number of voters."
And that's precisely the place you'd want to look for fraudsters. But oh so luckily the process was so badly done that we can't really determine what the numbers should be.
If you're trying to swing elections, you WANT there to be enough plausible deniability that the numbers can't be directly challenged. Can't do that if things are well-run and accurate.
But its REALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLYY convenient that the places where the 'incompetence' is actually so serious all tend to trend the same way on election night.
For 2018, if you add Palm Beach and Broward together (they are adjacent counties, BTW) there's about 1.3 million votes recorded between the two of them. It would be feasible if not likely to hide 10k-30k false votes in there if spread around enough, which as mentioned would be enough to swing the Senate race and several of the state-level executive races.
It is driven by widespread sloppiness, corner-cutting, incompetence, and insecurity that means losing candidates can spam plausible fraud allegations and election officials can't refute them.
The one thing I don't think that the architects of our Democratic processes realized was that literal Trillions of Dollars would become tied up in the outcomes that can swing with <100,000 votes.
And yet, I've lived in Florida long enough to see it go from being THE SINGULAR EXAMPLE of sloppy election processes (2000 was the year of 'hanging chads') to running effectively flawless elections that report on time and accurately. The state has only gotten more populous since then, too.
Its like so many complaints about social problems are disproven with a straightforward counterexamples.
"Oh man violent crime is complex and multi-factorial, you can't just arrest your way to safety." Why'd it work for El Salvador?
"Bureaucratic waste is inevitable, and achieving real cuts to government spending is futile because all the incentives run the other way." Why'd it work for Argentina?
"Elections are complicated and chaotic, and counting millions of votes quickly AND accurately isn't viable in many places. Incompetence will always seep in." Why'd it work for Florida?
So maybe the solution is to just send Desantis on a tour to every single state with fucked up elections and he can show them precisely what to fix.
This is a general problem with making highly-visible solutions to non-existent problems a key part of your politics.
Its clearly not non-existent. And if merely announcing the penalty is sufficient to scare people from doing it, so much the better.
That was actually the argument I made back when Desantis put together his election fraud task force or what-have-you.
Merely being aware that there's people out looking for it is a disincentive.
Yes, False positives are an issue, but our Justice system is pretty decent at dealing with/avoiding those.
Hence why I'd put the threshold somewhere around 100 votes so we don't catch, say, some grandma who accidentally voted twice or something. High enough that a volunteer is exceptionally unlikely to 'accidentally' breach it.
I strongly suspect that after one (1) person is unambiguously convicted for election fraud and publicly executed (you KNOW that every single network would cover such an event) that EVERYONE would be aware of the consequence and so it'd be much harder to recruit them unknowingly.
And for people who knowingly collaborate with a foreign party to undermine an election... we already treat Treason as a capital offense.
If faith in election integrity is a critical piece of successful Democracy, better treat it with sufficient weight.
faceh
1d ago
That tracks.
Harris seems like the type who 'knew' she needed an old White dude on the ticket... but was ABSOLUTELY unwilling to accept someone who might overshadow her, like Newsom. She had to put up with being under Biden, after all.
When in reality, being in someone's shadow was the main thing that kept her viable.
I'm also willing to entertain the hypothesis that he was chosen in part so that when Kamala won, they could use FedGov power to cover up the problem/immunize him from consequences.
Minnesota providing an ongoing, real time example of most of the bad things that righties say happen when Democrats are in charge has been interesting to me.
Then you remember that they used Tim Walz as their answer to the Trump problem. Very odd they'd want to hold his state out as an example like that?
faceh
1d ago
I root for Scott, I'm just not sure what projects he's a working on that I can wish him success with.
He did contribute to that "AGI 2027" paper/site which is getting some flack now, but I don't think any less of him.
faceh
1d ago
Oh, I would never suggest that voting counts need to be centralized.
My proposed solution was death penalty if you get caught fabricating more than, say, 100 votes.
Don't even have to re-do the election, just let the voters see that those who undermine it are punished.
I highly doubt she won't be able to find a normal job, in fact it may be a plus! I'm sure some business would love the publicity of hiring her, as FtttG outlined above, this is a new dynamic in the modern attention economy anyway. Our culture is extremely sexually immoral, don't get your hopes up that porn actresses are facing any serious consequences.
Good luck making a list of hardcore porn performers who notably go on to successful, fulfilling mainstream careers with stable relationships into middle age and beyond.
There's maybe a couple who quietly retired from the public eye and live on a ranch somewhere.
On the male side you have perhaps literally ONLY Ron Jeremy. And he's come to an extremely ignominious end.
EDIT: Wait, I forgot Sylvester Stallone. But he didn't have a very long adult career and it was softcore so I am comfortable discounting him.
Most of them that try to do something in the mainstream end up flaming out.
In no small part because there's a lot of other vices that tend to surround that particular career path, and you'll have very few respectable allies in your corner if you stumble.
Remember that one State-level Democratic candidate who had filmed sex acts for a Cam site? She lost.
The attention economy is just brutal since it is genuinely zero sum in nature and almost all rewards occur on a power law distribution.
Ain't nobody manufacturing more 'attention' in a factory somewhere, you've got to fight to draw from the same limited well as everyone else.
So you get the Red Queen's race as personified by Bonnie Blue (you have to do increasingly extreme and controversial acts, or pretend to, just to stay relevant), and the crab bucket effect where EVERYONE else you're competing with is looking for the smallest opportunity rip you down to give themselves a chance to ascend.
Does anyone remember Hawk Tuah girl in this the year of our Lord two-thousand-and-twenty-five?
Now... we're adding AI into this mix and expect the top performers in this space to get absolutely CUTTHROAT to stay on top. Although a few of them might decide to gracefully retire with their millions.
faceh
1d ago
I saw what happened in Broward County in Florida during the 2018 election, and the aftermath.
That was a close enough election that one County could have flipped most of the races. Probably did, in one case.
Since then, I refuse to discount the possibility of wanton fraud as a factor nationally anymore.
It is arguably a glaring, Death Star-esque weak spot in our National Democracy that the actual sanctity of vote counts is reliant totally on local officials who are not beholden to some larger national standard/oversight. We'd hope that with enough voter participation all the fraud will end up being a wash, but the challenge is that one party has control of the districts in large cities where larger scale fraud is easier to hide, while the other has a coalition based in less populous but overall more numerous localities.
faceh
1d ago
I am continually praying I wake up one day to hear that Twitch had to shut down as its business model proved unworkable and its popularity collapsed.
There's been a spate of drama in the livestream world for the past few months of relatively popular streamers being utterly horrible people. Car accidents while livestreaming, physical and mental abuse inflicted on vulnerable people, open sexual assault or shoplifting on stream.
This does little to impact their popularity, because the drama is the point.
I would be just fine taking a page out of South Korea's playbook and throw them in jail if they can't behave.
Or a more American solution, shoot the more annoying ones.
faceh
1d ago
I personally think it's a societal failure that people look to YouTube streamers as people to emulate as opposed to scientists, engineers, doctors, etc.
This is partially why I would ask this question. I don't know of enough good examples of good people doing good things who we should all be rooting for, outside of the easily visible celebrity space.
It seems to be in no small part that people who have 'good character' simply aren't inclined to seek the spotlight.
It is indeed probably humanity's singular greatest weak spot as a species (yet simultaneously, not really our fault) that the factors that confer high status amongst fellow humans is not well-aligned with what creates the largest material gains for said humans. Capitalism is a Kludge that manages to partially solve for hits, in a certain light.
faceh
1d ago
I know it sounds gay, but it really is a loss of civilisational vision. There is no Mandate of Heaven that inspires gifted people to actually build cool stuff.
No, I agree.
The coolest 'monumental' works human have recently achieved are the aforementioned Burj Khalifa, SpaceX's Starship (still in progress) and, no shit, the Las Vegas Sphere.
The Sphere is more ephemeral, of course, but its such a cool thing to exist in its own right.
There is a serious lack of inspiration from things 'larger than the self.' Religious belief has declined, national pride seems on the wane, and I think there are fewer truly inspirational figures around that people would cast aside their lives to follow.
I feel it myself. I've had to inculcate in myself a 'civilizational vision' for radical secular humanism that views conquering the local solar system as my own personal manifest destiny. That's something to do that feels big and important enough to matter.
But I'm an odd duck, I don't think this is a vision that will unite all that many people in its current state.
I guess that depends on how efficient you think "The Sort" has gotten.
My general perception is that if some person (in the West) possesses real noteworthy talent at a marketable ability, they will be identified and absorbed by some talent-hungry institution, AI Lab, Quant Trading Company, Pharma, etc. etc.
Although I could believe the hypothesis that there's a lot of guys with talent but limited discipline/drive who are ascertaining (correctly?) that beyond monetary rewards, the incentives to go out and use your talents are kinda dulled. You're not all that likely to find the love of your life, have kids, have a fulfilling long-term life and avoid burning out by age 40, so hey, smoking weed and playing vidya with the bros is an acceptable substitute.
What do we think would cause the U.S. to try and draw forth from such a 'latent' talent reserve?
faceh
1d ago
Broad question:
Who is worth rooting for?
I mean, what humans alive right now represent "the best of humanity" without some laundry list of skeletons in their closet.
Someone who has talent, charisma and, critically, an unimpeachable moral character. A 'wholesome' sheen is optional but not necessary.
To compare and contrast, the models (limiting it to celebrities) I have in my head when I think of this are guys like Mr. Rogers, Dolly Parton, Weird Al Yankovic, Steve Irwin, Robin Williams, and maybe Keanu Reeves.
And contrasting examples where they cultivated but didn't live up to the image: Billy Cosby, Ellen DeGeneres, Will Smith, Ashton Kutcher. (I'm not pretending their behaviors are equivalent, mind).
I've talked in the past about how so many 'role models' failed to live up to their hype. Here, though, I'm talking about something even more basic. Not necessarily someone you want to be like but someone who you want to see succeed because the virtue of their goals and their character is so 'pure' that its inherently inspiring.
Someone who makes you think "I want this guy to do well, I want him to win, I want him to overcome every single obstacle he ever encounters" because that person's success would restore your faith in humanity as a whole.
This question partially inspired by all the memes around PewDiePie literally winning at life and nobody can level an actual critique of his character. Yes, we all know about the bridge incident, that's almost the proof positive that he'd stored up such large reserves of goodwill that people implicitly understand he's a heckin' decent human being. Jontron also seems to have his his happy ending. Isaac Arthur is one for me, personally, but for my more narrow interests.
Is there anyone currently coming up through the ranks that seems to represent this semi-heroic archetype?
faceh
1d ago
Yeah.
Unless something is very wrong about my understanding of physics, we have beautiful technological solutions for almost every civilizational problem just sitting there, if only we can solve the coordination problems necessary to use them.
Although I do start to worry that we don't have a sufficient supply of competent people to coordinate around even if we could. The main disconnect from optimistic/utopic Sci-Fi from the past, including Older Star Trek, and the current reality is a ready supply of smart, driven people can work together to solve any pressing issues in front of them.
faceh
5d ago
That'd be a decent outcome. "Congress can choose to just sit on its ass if it wants, but it can't just delegate all its power over to the Executive and then let him decide what to do, it has to declare the actual authority in advance."
faceh
5d ago
Its an interesting point.
I genuinely figured we'd have gotten trade deals in place for tariff reduction by now.
But the timing will look better if the Tariffs come off in 2026 and this does in fact relieve some economic pressure in the leadup to the midterms.
I'm not even saying Trump intended to restrain economic growth specifically to release the restraints later, but its the sort of option he could exercise.
And I expect him to exercise any and all he can to help the GOP win, since he has a LOT to lose in this cycle.
...you say that, but Trump has clearly had some influence on when they decide to end them.
At least, THEY give him credit.
Is it just possible that those other countries take the existence and nature of the U.S. President into account in determining their military activities?
faceh
6d ago
I've correctly predicted like 8 of the last 0 serious crashes. (okay I technically called the Covid one in advance, but did NOT expect the snapback recovery).
I think the balancing act can be maintained for 1 more year, incidentally.
I do believe in the GOP's ability to shoot itself in the foot, repeatedly, though.
I've learned how futile it is to attempt predicting election outcomes a year out these days.
And just for comparison's sake, Tennessee had 3,090,161 voters participate in the 2024 election.
Yesterday's apparently amounts to About 178,000 between the two candidates. That's vastly smaller than Trump's previous margin of victory, itself.
My money bets that GOP voters, noting that this was not a particularly close race, opted to stay home for the most part. The very fact that a 'blue mirage' could emerge during the process indicates the 'error bars' on how representative this election is were pretty huge.
The Prediction Market on this election never dropped below 85% chance of Republican Victory (I profited on this one because it seemed obviously underpriced overall, incidentally).
I do think a problem that the GOP hasn't solved yet is how to get their voters motivated to show up when Trump isn't on the ballot. But I currently have purchased prediction market positions in favor of an overall GOP victory in the midterms because I think they're underpriced currently. I am prepared to lose on this due to the aforementioned difficulty of predicting, I'm mostly hoping to trade on some volatility.
Yep.
Maybe if we don't want centralized control over vote counts, we could still have some central FedGov fund for paying the election expenses of given districts so long as they meet certain standards and can pass an audit.
And maybe those that fail, rather than toss out that election's results, the punishment is that their votes won't count in next cycle.
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