faceh
8mo ago
won't catch people who snap and go on a spree,
I think those are a proportionally negligible as to the total number of deaths that occur annually, though.
Like, a couple hundred even in the worst years, in the U.S.
Stopping those would probably require a massive surveillance state which would cost billions annually and would, like with gun confiscations, oppress 'normal' citizens. To say nothing of the potential for abuses.
The other way to stop those is to arm responsible citizens who can stop them as they happen
I dunno, seems like aggressively arresting and locking up the most violent citizens would also tip the balance in favor of letting the remaining citizens remain armed, making the chances of an armed citizen being able to stop a random spree killer a bit higher.
What really chafes me is that all discussion is sucked into the gun control debate so we can't have a decent discussion about other policy approaches.
faceh
8mo ago
I mean, El Salvador basically did a small version of that by just rounding up and locking up the most violent people they could find (as judged by gang affiliation) and it worked fabulously. Murder rates plummeting down immediately.
Didn't need to go after every citizen to see if they had guns, just find the dangerous ones. They arrested and imprisoned about 80,000 people, which is not nothing, but much more modest than forcing millions to hand over weapons.
I have many reasons to believe a similar approach would do the same in the U.S.
faceh
8mo ago
Again I'd be curious as to what happens when it becomes known that nobody anywhere is in possession of a gun, whether the incentive shifts would make criminals more bold, or less bold.
If we're talking Thanos-snapping, I'd pretty much prefer to Thanos snap any person with a propensity for uncontrolled violence away, I think it'd create more immediate gains, even if there were second-order impacts.
Murder and suicide rates in any country banning guns with the same or close GDP of the USA are a tiny fraction of what ours are.
Do it by state.
There's virtually no correlation within the U.S. between gun ownership rates and crime, or murder rates, on the state level.
Likewise, Switzerland has the highest gun ownership rates in Europe, and is around the lowest for crime and murder too!
Literally, there is no good evidence that guns are the driving factor in crime and death. Likewise, very little evidence that increased gun control drives decreases in crime.
I can't even understate how weak the actual case for gun control as a policy is, compared to various other policies that could be implemented with less expense, less interference with peaceful citizens, and less risk of unrest and resistance in response!
Are you really linking me to a comment recommending only your opponents be disarmed? Come on man.
My request is to disarm those people who assert that disarmament is good! Its about the fairest possible prescription.
If Democrats don't believe in Second Amendment rights, they shouldn't raise much fuss over waiving their said rights.
faceh
8mo ago
Better hope that nothing happens that renders them more useful again, is all I'll say.
(which is similar to what I say about many types of guns)
faceh
8mo ago
dogs provide no net benefit to anyone but the pleasure of the owners
Seeing eye dogs and handicapped assistance dogs, bomb and/or drug sniffing dogs, rescue dogs, I mean let's at least be clear about what is being given up.
To say nothing of cattle dogs and sled dogs and other working dogs.
I'm not just against Dog Euthanasia because I like dogs, we have millennia of shared history with the species and we've bred them to fill dozens of niches that have aided human society for centuries. Giving up that benefit with no takesies backsies is not something to do flippantly.
faceh
8mo ago
I'm really not convinced we'd be noticeably safer all told.
I still remember The Waukesha Christmas Parade Attack which killed 6 and injured 62. Trucks are relatively cheap, at least to rent, and can rack up a body count. If shootings get supplanted by trucks running down parades as the preferred modus operandi, I don't know that the death toll from the mass killings would be substantially less.
And I will consistently remind people that Guns can be 3D printed, so a sufficiently motivated psycho or criminal is going to be able to procure a weapon if they really want to. This will only get easier going forward.
And try estimating of the number of casualties that would be sustained in the process of confiscating firearms! If even 1% of firearms owners choose to resist, and 10% of those incidents result in at least one officer being injured or killed, we're talking somewhere on the order of 80,000 - 100,000 casualties over however many years. Compared to 21k homicides per year.
Is that reallllly worth the tradeoff, if we don't believe we can confiscate every firearm without incident?
Anyhow, I would redirect you to my recent policy proposal about banning and confiscating guns for Democrats only,, as my proposed compromise on this topic.
I don't fall for these kinds of traps usually because I also understand there are potentially second order effects to consider, and thus its not a pure linear tradeoff, even if we design the policy on that basis.
Maybe the population of dogs, despite killing kids, was also curbing some additional threat where, if the dogs were removed, would mostly replace the dogs as the primary threat to child livelihood.
In fact we have a very topical analogy for this, in the real world! WOLF REINTRODUCTION!
Ranchers killed off wolves because they were a threat to cattle herds, but this also allows the local deer, elk, etc. population to explode, which means overforaging of vegetation and other potential environmental harms, which is ALSO bad for the cattle on top of all else!
So they've brought back wolves in certain areas and the argument is that now the herbivore population is back into a 'natural' balance checked by the predators which is better for the local flora, which is better for the ecosystem as a whole.
Similarly, imagine we get rid of guns and criminal psychopaths with knives are suddenly springing up everywhere, stabbing children, unchecked by their natural predators.
So the Buridan point for being in favor of mass dog euthanasia is going to be relatively high, for me, and I would certainly explore other policy options before committing to it.
Went over Noah's recent twitter posts and he's as bad as I remember. Recounted here:
https://www.themotte.org/post/1160/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/250998?context=8#context
He's just all over the place. He wants to comment on cyberwarfare capabilities in China, but I doubt he has knowledge in that area.
Then on U.S. energy production policy.
Then on Haitian migrants in Ohio.
But makes glaring errors in each comment, and that's just the ones I semi-randomly picked as examples.
This is the stuff you GENERALLY don't get from Zeihan, Silver, or Scott, they wouldn't make STRONG claims well outside their area of expertise and then fail to back up any of it.
Yud, well, his whole thing is that AGI is likely to kill off humanity and he's seeing more and more signs he feared might arise and yet few people seeming to care, it must be a bit of a living nightmare for the guy.
His book is a good example, where it's stated as a prediction rather than a highly unlikely worst-case scenario. Funnily enough, Noah had the same critique as I did.
I also read Zeihan's book and skimming that review I'm not even sure Noah understand the arguments. He makes the following statement:
There’s also the strong possibility that China — the only state capable of overthrowing U.S. power by force — will choose to cooperate with the U.S. to keep the sea lanes open, simply because of the catastrophic consequences to China of not doing so (which Zeihan vividly describes). Ultimately, Zeihan’s predictions of global anarchy rely on countries collectively making decisions that are utterly disastrous for themselves.
But he earlier grants that "The first of these [demographic collapse] is probably unavoidable." So he's accepting the premise that Zeihan uses there!
And Zeihan's whole point is that China is in such rapid, terminal demographic decline that they will collapse entirely on their own, with or without U.S. keeping the sea lanes open, so unless you can explain why a Chinese collapse WON'T happen, then 'U.S.-Chinese Cooperation' is not a viable solution because there won't be any China to cooperate with.
I don't know how a guy can miss or ignore points this badly without it being intentional. the reason countries will collectively make decisions that are disastrous for themselves is that they won't have much choice once the demographics collapse forces their hand!
And here he goes doing it in just the past couple days:
https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1836065799406280838
Claiming that China somehow possesses capacity to detonate electronic devices at will... in the U.S.
Without a single suggestion as to the means they could do it. Like, there's almost zero reason to believe this is true.
https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1835718296047653161
Here he is giving Kamala credit for increases in U.S. energy production that By the very graphs he posted obviously and clearly began during Trump's term.
https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1835388262464286853
Here he references data that cuts off in 2022 to dismiss claims about the number of migrants in Springfield in 2024. Then later admits that the number could still be higher and indeed plenty of people post various sources to back up the claim of 20k. Note that you can easily check and see that there was dramatic devolution of the situation in Haiti that might have caused a large uptick in refugees since then!
This is the guy who writes a column claiming to analyze facts and give reasonable conclusions based on those facts.
I don't use the term hack as a trivial thing, but I genuinely believe Noah Smith is a hack.
faceh
8mo ago
Oh is this going to be one of those arguments.
This is because, while the action itself has purely worse consequences, being the sort of agent who will take that action has good consequences.
Yeah, now its just a question of how recursive you want to get. Defecting makes sense in a one-shot prisoner's dilemma when you have no way of judging that the other party might be willing to cooperate. Iterated games, if they're of indefinite length present different strategic options.
I wasn't even agreeing with the premise of "moral principles force you to act in an irrational way." Just pointing out the potential contradiction if you want to 'win' you might have to bend or break certain moral principles, which was the gist of the original question.
Indeed, I think the whole point of invoking morals as principles rather than as 'mere' variables in a utility function, some principles exist because they DO create better outcomes in a systemic way, even if it leads to 'losing' a few local contests. As you say, 'being the sort of person' who does the Good thing even at personal cost will probably create many more utils over the long run.
But there are indeed some moral principles which can be systemically exploited and if your principles cause you to repeatedly lose, you're not being 'rational' on your own terms.
But then we're back to the question: what do you value and is it easier to maximize your utility by following certain moral guiding principles even when it leads to 'losing' a few isolated games, or by being completely unprincipled other than trying to maximize your own utility in every single game you encounter and adapt your strategy accordingly.
faceh
8mo ago
Continually hitting the defect button is losing.
Ah, but that's only if you're actually in an iterated game.
Some people might correctly model an interaction as a one-shot game with a new stranger every single time, with no mutual knowledge or expectations established beforehand. In that case, hitting 'defect' will let you win in cases where the other side magnanimously chooses cooperate.
If you go into an interaction knowing you're pitted against person who will choose 'cooperate' on principle, and you don't expect to have repeated interactions with that person, you can 'win' by defecting because you 'know' you're escaping scott-free in that case.
Indeed, I don't know of any prisoner's dilemma tournaments where the 'cooperate every time' strategy wins.
With all that said, I'm agreeing that if you take it up one level, being the 'sort of person' who cooperates when faced with such a dilemma creates a much better world, and thus will likely create more utility for you, and for all other players, which can certainly compound over time.
So adopting the moral principle that loses you individual games can still make you the overall winner.
faceh
8mo ago
I mean I can do that, but some other lunk who is casting a vote because Taylor Swift said to can cast theirs and entirely cancel out the effect of mine.
Hard to be enthusiastic about the "institutions of the republic" under those conditions.
To be rational is to rationally extend ones moral principles rationally. Why would it be irrational to behave in line with ones moral principles?
If we're talking about LessWrong Rationalists, then the whole idea behind learning to be rational is that "Rationalists Should Win."
They should achieve their instrumental goals at minimal cost and end up with more utility points than when they started.
But having rigid 'moral principles' implies there are personal rules that you simply will not break. And if another rational actor knows you have rules you won't break, they can exploit those rules to reliably defeat you in any given contest. Here "defeat" just means "increase their own utility even at the expense of your utility."
One particularly silly example is if you had the moral rule "Never physically hurt women." Then your opponent could just pay a woman to come around and beat you up and take your stuff whenever they wanted, knowing you probably won't fight back.
If you have certain rules governing your behavior that you NEVER will alter, you're precommitting to certain actions that can lead to you 'losing,' which means you're making a 'precommitment to behave irrationally in specific circumstances' and thus not being fully 'rational' since, as above, "Rationalists should win."
Reinforcing east-flank NATO countries is a good idea given Russia's aggression.
Again, with what troops? What second-order effects are there from doing so? Why does it assume U.S. troops rather than Europeans stepping into the gap?
Can't just magick up these solutions because you think they sound good. Perfect example with the test and trace. He didn't bother to think about feasibility (or, as he might put it "state capacity") given the actual situation on the ground, and just pushed for an idea because in theory it might be a great solution! But what does that count for?
He seems to be incompetent on geopolitical matters, and I've had a few Gell-Mann moments where he talks about topics I'm actually familiar with and he gets things badly wrong, or misses some important extra variable.
Like, it is unclear why you'd choose him for your analysis over any other random pundit, other than he's pretty good at couching his observations as if they're detached and 'objective' in some ways. But as with the leftist antisemitism issue, he appears to be so heavily detached that he's not really engaged with base reality enough to pontificate!
The guy I've been currently listening to for insights is Peter Zeihan, and he seems to be MUCH, MUCH better at the "levelheaded examination of objective facts on the ground and delving into implications" game.
So the value that Noah contributes to the discourse, even if it isn't negative (I think it is, he clouds issues more than he clarifies!) is probably not enough to justify listening to him over someone like, say, Nate Silver or even Eliezer Yudkowsky with Demonstrated expertise and a track record for honesty and accuracy. And again, Scott Alexander is great on the meta level for figuring out why we make certain errors in thinking.
On the other hand, there have now been two separate attempts on Trump's life. Clearly a sign of lowering temperatures!
Globally, unrest seems to be ticking up regularly!
We just had riots in Ireland and England over their migrant situation. Also in Venezuela over an election. And in the U.S. Pro-palestine protestors are still kicking around. There was an actual shooting involving one recently.. We've had multiple (three that I know of, as another one occurred this past weekend) individuals who have literally burned themselves to death as a political statement.
I'd wager the main reason things are holding a bit steady is the pending election, where both sides think they have a shot a victory. I will happily bet against anyone who thinks unrest won't immediately spike up inside of six months if Trump manages to win the election.
Like, the whole argument seems to hinge on the idea that people are becoming more satisfied with the status quo, less prone to lash out. Which seems blatantly untrue to me?
Granted that films are supposed to be emotionally manipulative experiences (why else would you ever watch a horror film?) but yeah, I really, REALLY hate when a movie's score is trying to sell me on some moment as though it is a huge deal, be it the action, or romantic elements, or some 'huge' twist, and I NOTICE I'm being manipulated because the music is telling me to feel an emotion that the film simply hasn't earned or induced with its other elements.
The one that really, really got me to reject him as a source of useful insight was this INTENSE insistence, during Covid times, that every state, every country absolutely HAD to implement a "Test and Trace" protocol before lockdowns could be lifted.
He actually changed his twitter handle to include "Test and Trace." He wrote articles about it. Its not that he was suggesting the idea itself, per se, that bugged me it was more the complete conviction he decided to take on the position which seemed extremely unwarranted by the actual information on hand at the time.
And of course I think he abruptly stopped mentioning it at all sometime in 2021, and so hasn't grappled at all with whether it actually proved effective vs. other methods (or simply doing nothing) and re-evaluated his once strongly-held beliefs.
Granted, he's just one of many people and institutions who torched credibility in my eyes during that period of time.
Another example, he (a Jewish man) was apparently quite blind to antisemitism on the Left until October 2023, and he OF COURSE insists this wasn't due to his own ideological leanings. He's not the only one, but my lord does his obliviousness seem particularly terminal.
Finding a blind spot THAT massive should inspire some epistemic humility, but he earns his keep by writing pieces about how people should understand and act in the world so that would mean he'd have to find some other line of work, too.
Here he is 2022 calling for a troop buildup in Poland and in other NATO countries. not sure where he thinks those troops are coming from, or what his actual expertise on military matters is. Or whether he's gone back and checked if this was a good idea in light of the past two years of fighting.
The main reason I haven't really lost even an ounce of respect for Scott Alexander, by comparison, is Scott's willingness to actively re-examine his past beliefs (which he often posts in form of odds-based predictions anyway!) to see if he did anything particularly wrong. Noah simply does not do this, and as mentioned probably can't afford to if he wants to keep his job.
faceh
8mo ago
They can show up in a new situation, or setting, and not seem uncertain like most people. Since they don't appear uncertain people tend to go along with them because the logic is: If someone didn't know what they were doing they wouldn't be able to appear so confident.
Definitely agree with this addition, the ability to project confidence in unfamiliar situations is a trait I've known certain people to possess which makes it terrifyingly easy to 'get along' with them despite knowing them for a very brief time and learning very little about them.
My only pushback is that humor is still a huge part of that equation since being able to deftly use humor even in situations others would find uncomfortable is very important to appearing confident! Like you suggest, someone who is making jokes and engaging with people where others are nervous gives the strong impressive they know what they're doing.
Funny enough, though, I'm naturally suspicious of these people and it feels like I can 'see through' the facade more often than not.
This is likely because I'm a natural introvert and just autistic enough that I can ignore social cues rather than respond to them uncritically, so somebody I don't know approaching me in a situation already puts me on edge (what are they trying to sell me?) and making airs like they're a good ol' buddy of mine when I don't know them from Adam makes me shut off the normal paths they'd use to get me to like them.
And indeed, a large portion of these people are easy to push 'out of their depth' if you DO know what you're talking about and you don't care about making the interaction socially awkward. They can revert to platitudes and deflections and double down on humor to maintain their image, but it breaks their normal game plan.
Some portion of these folks are actual sociopaths seeking to infiltrate a given space, so I tend not to just let them ingratiate themselves into groups I care about without testing them.
There is something of an algorithm to it which is to basically compare different perspectives to find variances between them. Once you notice these differences you can start reflect on past interactions and imaginally practice different points where you could have said something humorous.
My 'trick' has been to carefully create a particular set of expectations, and then thwart them at an opportune time with little warning.
Imagine the humor inherent when you're talking to a nice, 80 year old woman calmly knitting a scarf for her grandkids and reminiscing about the good old days when she accidentally stabs herself with a needle and lets fly with a tirade of horrifying curses and epithets like a drunken sailor, then composes herself, apologizes, and continues on like nothing happened.
When I interact with almost everybody I default to a largely professional, straightforward, grounded persona (which flows pretty naturally from my job title) and keep most of my commentary very direct and sensible, with dashes of color to show I'm not a complete fuddy-duddy. But then, once people see me as the straightlaced and perhaps unimaginative type, I can whip out some completely absurd, possibly offensive comment when there's an opportunity, with complete deadpan delivery, and people will be caught so off guard that they go silent for several seconds trying to discern if A) they just heard that correctly and B) I'm actually being serious.
Usually that's enough to get a laugh, but if not I relieve the tension by throwing up my hands and going "just kidding!" but with a bit of a wink on top.
Its a reliable method because I can always bring my own personality with me to most interactions, and I can very consciously choose the time and place to pull the card if I gauge it is appropriate with the other person(s).
The 'downside' is that it becomes way harder to surprise people who have known me for a long time with that tactic.
Humor may be the social phenomena that is hardest to be 'naturally' talented at. Requires a mix of traits that are likely rare across human populations to truly have the knack. That is to say that comedians, especially in the improv space are demonstrating excellence at a really impressive skill. And likewise, autists or others who have a hard time reading a room are handicapped to a large degree if they can't figure out how to make others laugh.
A well-timed joke is what can make any given speech, conversation, debate, or lecture 3x as memorable. A poorly-timed or poorly-delivered joke can crush the mood just as easily.
Indeed, I'd argue that a full on 70% of what we call 'charisma' is just being adept at humor. The other 30% is being good-looking.
Knowing how and when to apply humor is such a tricky thing that I'm not even sure how much you can actually practice it if you don't have the bundle of natural prerequisites to be make it work.
faceh
8mo ago
Man if Noah Smith says something I'm reflexively going to believe it is the actual inverse of the truth.
It'd be 'easy' to "call the top" after the intense violence that marked the summer of 2020, but I don't for a second buy that the factors that enabled that sort of violence have changed much, or that there's not sufficient energy simmering under the surface for it to happen again.
Typical sort linear thinking, draw the line on the graph, circle the high point, and assert that things couldn't possibly go higher than that!
You could make the same argument about inflation, actually, claiming that because it peaked under Covid conditions it is unlikely to ever get so high again because those conditions have passed.
It is interesting, I've been trying to inject a little serious conversation into friend gatherings recently, because the normal mode of interaction everyone has is just riffing off cultural touchpoint du jour and relatively low level gossip over local goings on. Which is fine but my brain loses interest fast.
I don't try to force seriousness, but I'll bring up a topic that isn't blatantly humorous, make some initial contributions on it, and encourage debate and exchange, but it'll only be a couple minutes at best before someone spots a joke or humorous segue and that puts the topic back onto the riffing.
And its not like I bring up depressing topics, more just bringing up things that would require a bit more mental effort and maybe a tad bit of vulnerability. I'm not so autistic as to expect people to be comfortable announcing deep personal insights in a group setting. Humor just seems to be the way they maintain the conversation without any real attachment to it.
My rough model is that most people just really want to avoid thinking about the real world while just 'hanging out' and if the topic isn't something they can make brief contributions to without much mental effort (topics they're experts on) they just not contribute on that topic. So hard to generate engaging discussion when a particular gathering isn't intended for such.
Which is also why politics is a popular topic (if everyone shares similar beliefs) since you can just repeat the normal mantras and memes and get along just fine.
If there's a good way to reach swing state voters then each party would implement it. I'd suggest that the 50k or so undecided voters who will probably end up determining the election outcome aren't going to decide it based on something that would seem rational to an informed voter.
You're greenlit for a 10 episode Netflix series.
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