faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
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User ID: 884
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
1d ago
I live in California, I interact with people who are not here legally on a quite regular basis. Thinking about e.g. the people I know who have a new partner/housemate, or got a new nanny/gardener, and then filtering down to those that are not here legally, they're mostly people who have been here for a while. Substantial selection effects, obviously.
But also census data says, of foreign-born non-citizens, the distribution of dates of entry as of 2023 was
Entered 2010 or later: 12.8M (56%)
Entered 2000 to 2009: 4.9M (21%)
Entered 1990 to 1999: 3.0M (13%)
Entered before 1990: 2.1M (9%)
Total: 22.9M
As of 2021 the same data was
Entered 2010 or later: 10.2M (48%)
Entered 2000 to 2009: 5.3M 24.79%
Entered 1990 to 1999: 3.3M 15.66%
Entered before 1990: 2.4M 11.32%
Total 21.2M
So that's an increase of 1.7M non-citizen immigrants in the 2 year period from 2021 to 2023, with an increase of 2.6M who entered after 2010 (and a decrease of ~900k non-citizens who entered before 2010 over the same time period, who left/died/gained citizenship). And keep in mind that in a normal year 700k to 1M green cards are issued. So I don't see space for half of illegal immigrants to have come over later than 2020.
Where are you getting your data, aside from vibes?
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
1d ago
I've always wanted to land a plane.
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
1d ago
The number of people who are estimated to have come in during the last 4 years is comparable to the total prior illegal population.
I expect this statistic double-counts people, because I find it quite doubtful that the median length of time that people have been living here illegally is 4 years or less (which it would have to be, if more than half of the people who are currently living here illegally came in the last 4 years).
I don't dispute that Biden's immigration policy was bad BTW. I specifically dispute the claim that before Trump I illegal immigration was not an emergency, but between the end of Trump I and the start of Trump II, it became such an emergency that it now requires resolution within months, and so we must set aside rule of law and due process concerns.
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
1d ago
The relevant sample size is "at least one of 278", not "at most one of 100,000". But honestly if it was "we fucked up on this one of 278, but we're making a good faith effort to fix our fuck up" I think that would be fine. It's the "we fucked up, we admit we fucked up, we totally could fix it, but we won't and you can't make us" that is getting people up in arms.
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
1d ago
As I recall the Anwar Alaki case actually got quite a lot of airtime, at least in the circles I inhabit.
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
1d ago
Huge relative to the number of illegal immigrants already in the country? I will repeat the question I asked Dean:
If you were to go to a home depot parking lot at 7 am and talk to the workers there, what do you think the median time the undocumented subset of workers have been in the country would be? I predict 8 ± 3 years.
Do you predict otherwise? If not, that means that most illegal residents of the US are not recent arrivals.
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
1d ago
If you were to go to a home depot parking lot at 7 am and talk to the workers there, what do you think the median time the undocumented subset of workers have been in the country would be? I predict 8 ± 3 years.
Do you predict otherwise? If not, that means that most illegal residents of the US are not recent arrivals.
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
1d ago
If the government managed to bring him back, sticks him before an immigration judge who says "Your asylum claims are no longer valid due to changed facts on the ground, assuming they ever were, it's fine to execute the deportation order to El Salvador", then is everyone who is upset about this going to nod sagaciously and be satisfied that due process was followed?
Yep, I'd be pretty satisfied by this outcome. My objection to this deportation is pretty much the same as (and milder than) the objection I have to, as @Dean pointed out above, the intentional killing of American citizens without a trial.
If they get him out of El Salvador and dump him six feet across the border in Honduras, does that fix everything?
Maybe not anymore but I don't think this would have blown up like it did if the place he was shipped to wasn't somewhere we were specifically prohibited from sending him.
How much due process in general needs to be given to each of the 10-30 million illegal immigrants?
I mean you're talking about 1 in 30 people living within the US, who came here over the course of decades. It's not reasonable to expect for them to all be deported over the course of months. The number of illegal immigrants in the US has stayed pretty constant over the past couple decades, so I expect that just enforcing existing laws and executing existing processes will be enough to reduce the number of people living here without legal status. And I don’t see any particular reason this has become an emergency that needs to be resolved this year, and historically the executive granting itself emergency powers to deal with an ongoing slow-burning problem has not gone well.
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
2d ago
My portfolio is only down a couple percent since Trump took office. "Stonks down" is not a substantial reason for me to be bearish on Trump. But prior to Trump taking office I held a sliver of hope that Trump actually meant what he said about making America great and making government efficient and effective, and then his actions so far have just been tearing down the few institutions and policies that still were contributing to making America great one after another. Mostly my increased bearishness is just that sliver of hope being extinguished.
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
2d ago
It's trivial to identify examples of freedom that are not better the more people are free to exercise them.
Are there some specific freedoms do you think that you currently have but wish you didn't have? Alternatively, are there some freedoms you have and exercise, but wish you lived in a society where you and everyone else could not exercise that freedom?
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
4d ago
Yeah, I've gotten some stuff off Temu. The app is hilariously gamified and scammy but the stuff I ordered did arrive and was as described. The quality is about what you would expect, which is to say "adequate for single-use items".
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
5d ago
Is there a way to get email (or other) notifications for replies on here?
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
5d ago
Sometimes wishes come true He was here 4 days ago.
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
8d ago
Are you under the impression that object level considerations matter?
Yes. Is this supposed to be a trick question?
We're looking at a power struggle not a high school mock trial. It's zero sum. One side will win and the other will lose.
I predict that neither the judicial nor the executive branches are going to be sufficiently defanged that the other no longer needs to compromise with them after this conflict.
One side has a lot more soldiers. How many divisions has Roberts?
I don't anticipate that soldiers will play a significant role in the conflict over the TDA deportations. Do you?
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
9d ago
Man, if only we had a third branch of government, not just the executive and judicial branches.
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
9d ago
Excellent post. One thing jumped out at me:
Look at the lead time for something like a modern fighter jet. What's the chance that the guy who originally greenlit the program is still around to be 'accountable' if/when it's actually used in a hot conflict, such that its performance can be assessed against the competition? Do you handicap that assessment at all? He made his decision a decade ago, seeing a certain set of problems that they were trying to solve. A decade or two later, your adversaries have also been developing their own systems. Should he be punished in some way for failing to completely predict how the operating environment would change over decades?
Punishment for failure seems like exactly the wrong way to handle accountability for a project that has a low probability of success. The motivation to reduce a 99% chance of being punished in 20 years to a 95% chance of being punished in 20 years just isn't going to be that large. This is especially true if the people involved are self-selecting into the position - nobody is going to self-select into a position with a near-certainty of punishment in 20 years unless the benefits now outweigh even a certainty of punishment in 20 years, so the punishment just can't be that severe.
Talk about rewarding the guy who made a prescient prediction 20 years ago, on the other hand, and I think the dynamics flip. Going from a 1% chance of collecting a $10M prize in 20 years to a 5% chance of collecting that same prize is substantial and motivational. Think of how hard scientists chasing Nobel prizes work.
Flip the probabilities (i.e. a competent person would have a 99% success rate on a project and an incompetent one would have a 95% success rate) and I think the argument for accountability in the form of punishment makes more sense than accountability in the form of reward. That's sort of how it goes with professional licensing, and it's a pretty solid strategy in that context.
But yeah, "we should abandon accountability" sounds bad and counterintuitive but I think Tyler is right to call out "accountability" in the specific form of punishment for failing to achieve highly uncertain outcomes.
Cook PVI seems useful from a contestedness-of-district perspective. I do think Trump-alignment-of-winning-rep matters too, especially in cases like Sheri Biggs, who won in SC-3 over her Trump-endorsed opponent Mark Burns. SC-3 isn't contested at all (72% R), and so your analysis would put her as "low susceptibility to breaking from Trump".
Keep in mind that Trump would have to do something pretty bad to get his approval ratings all the way down in the 35% range. For reference, his approval rating is currently sitting at 45% (and within-Republican-party approval rating sitting at 90%). So I agree that as things stand now, representatives mostly can't oppose him.
But the question is what happens when 25-30% of his own party disapproves of what he's doing. Once we're conditioning on him doing something bad enough that his loyal base stops being so loyal, I think the set of safe actions for house representatives changes too.
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
9d ago
@Glassnoser are you referring to this section?
- Every employer shall respect the worker’s right to carry on his activities in French; therefore, the employer is required, in particular,
(1) to see that any offer of employment, transfer or promotion the employer publishes is in French;
(2) to see that any individual employment contract the employer enters into in writing is drawn up in French;
(3) to use French in written communications, even those after termination of the employment relationship, with all or part of the staff, a worker in particular or an association of workers representing all or part of the staff; and
(4) to see that the documents below that the employer makes available are drawn up in French and, if also available in another language, see that the French version is available on terms that are at least as favourable:
(a) employment application forms;
(b) documents relating to conditions of employment; and
(c) training documents produced for the staff.
Despite subparagraph 2 of the first paragraph, the parties to an individual employment contract that is a contract of adhesion may be bound only by its version in a language other than French if, after examining its French version, such is their express wish. In the other cases, an individual employment contract may be drawn up exclusively in a language other than French at the express wish of the parties.
Despite subparagraph 3 of the first paragraph, the employer may communicate in writing with a worker exclusively in a language other than French if the latter has so requested. 1977, c. 5, s. 41; 2022, c. 14, s. 29.
I took a crack at answering here. Willingness to veto obviously depends quite a bit on the specific policy being vetoed, not just Trump's approval rating, but I'm guessing Trump's approval rating would have to fall to somewhere between 36% on the very upper end and 28% on the low end for the house republicans to start turning against him in those sorts of numbers.
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
9d ago
I probably put the 50/50 around 35% rather than 37%, but it does seem like we're actually pretty close in our assessment of how things are likely to go in terms of approval rating.
That said, the actual number to watch is "how many reps can go against Trump without being voted out". If Trump's approval rating drops to 35% or 37%, that indicates that his enthusiastic approval rating is probably a fair bit lower, which means that at least some republican reps will be in districts where less than half of the republican voters are enthusiastic Trump supporters. I pulled down 10 representatives at random from the House website and then did a vibe check of how Trump-aligned they were and whether they could/would oppose him if he got unpopular.
- Rep. John Carter (R-TX-31): 90/100 Trump alignment, voted to challenge 2020 election results, deep-red district. VERY NO
- Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-IA-1): 65/100 Trump alignment, won by razor-thin margins in a swingy district. YES
- Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL-21): 90/100 Trump alignment, Trump campaign co-chair, voted with Trump positions 90.6% of time. NO
- Rep. Troy Downing (R-MT-2): 80/100 Trump alignment, Trump endorsee, deep-red district. NO
- Rep. Brian Jack (R-GA-3): 95/100 Trump alignment, former White House Political Director for Trump NO
- Rep. Tracey Mann (R-KS-1): 85/100 Trump alignment, election challenge supporter, fundraised for Trump's "election defense fund," VERY NO
- Rep. Sheri Biggs (R-SC-3): 75/100 Trump alignment, won despite opponent having Trump's endorsement. VERY YES
- Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL-7): 80/100 Trump alignment, Trump Defense Board appointee but also military connections, swingy district. POSSIBLY
- Rep. Zachary Nunn (R-IA-3): 70/100 Trump alignment, competitive district. YES
- Rep. Robert Wittman (R-VA-1): 85/100 Trump alignment, wanted to overturn 2020 election. VERY NO
So if Trump became deeply unpopular (and a 35% approval rating is pretty deeply unpopular, even end-of-term Biden only dropped to 38%), I think at least 3 and maybe 4 of these 10 reps would oppose Trump if he was pushing to do something deeply stupid and unpopular. With 218 democrats and 223 republicans in the house, you'd need about a third of republicans to flip... and it looks like about a third of republicans could flip if there was a compelling enough reason (and "compelling enough" is quite a bit short of "literally Hitler").
I actually don't follow in terms of how mortgage-backed securities are different than the other two examples here. If anything I think the tariffs are the odd one out here, since my modal expectation is that Trump walks them back and there is approximately zero long-term impact (at least relative to the other three examples). If you had said "4 is different because it's a nothingburger" I would admit you might have a point -- but to say that tariffs are nothingburgers like 9/11 and covid, not real like the GFC... I notice that I am confused.
My original point was just that there is frequently some Event which impacts everyone, and where everyone gains strong opinions about Adjacent Topic where they didn't really have an opinion on Adjacent Topic before Event, and so pointing out that people had no opinion about Adjacent Topic before Event isn't particularly informative.
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
10d ago
You're back! Glad to hear you're still alive.
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
10d ago
- Before 2001, most people had never cared about airplane cockpit security.
- Before 2008, most people had never cared about mortgage-backed securities.
- Before 2020, most people had never cared about coronaviruses.
- Before 2025, most people had never cared about tariffs.
Why is 4 different from the others?
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
10d ago
The term "negative feedback loop" is a technical term for this but a non-specific one. Other related terms are "non-credible threat", "equilibrium selection", and "brinksmanship". I like the term "one of those cursed anti-inductive things", though, because
- The situation is cursed
- The anti-inductiveness is the main think causing the situation to be cursed
- I don't have the math chops to know what the equilibrium actually looks like here, so using proper terms from the game theory literature would be an implicit claim to expertise that I don't have.
Here's how I'm modeling the situation:
- Trump has two buttons. The first button is labeled "WIN", and announces to the world that an economic disaster will happen. The second button is labeled "LOSE", and announces to the world that the scheduled economic disaster has been cancelled.
- Trump views himself if a winner if his people love him AND his most-recently-pressed button was the "WIN" button. He cares more about being loved than about winning.
- Trump wants to be a winner.
- Trump can press both buttons any number of times.
- Trump's people are old and their nest eggs have significant market exposure. If the market drops >10%, his people will stop loving him until the market recovers to at least that point.
As far as I can tell, this situation leads to the cycle
- Trump presses "WIN".
- Nothing happens until market participants judge that there's at least a 25% chance that Trump won't press "LOSE"
- Once market participants judge a 25% chance that Trump presses "LOSE", the market drops by 10%
- Trump's people stop loving him
- Trump presses "LOSE".
- The market recovers. Anyone who bet that Trump would press "LOSE" makes money.
- Go to 1.
I don't have the math chops to figure out what actually happens in this model as market participants get better at predicting Trump's behavior though. My suspicion is "25% chance the disaster actually happens each time we go through the cycle".
Mind that those numbers are over 2 years or half the term. Unless you're saying there were 6M+ distinct people who immigrated illegally during Biden's term?
Edit: also, for the claim that over half of all illegal immigrants came here in the last 5 years to hold up, we'd have to say that the census under Biden was underestimating in a way that previous censuses didn't. In the absence of better data, I'm inclined to trust the census to at least get the relative proportions correct.
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