Thanks, I guess I was slightly off, it's more like dozens per year. Still far more deaths than the total number of US school shooting deaths over the same time period (131 killed and 197 wounded in active shooter incidents at elementary and secondary schools from 2000 to 2020).
guajalote
9mo ago
Let's assume for the sake of argument that alcohol prohibition reliably reduces the murder rate in the long run. This is worth taking into account, but it's hardly conclusive of whether we should have alcohol prohibition. Reducing the speed limit on all roads to 25mph will reliably reduce traffic deaths; outlawing TVs and bookshelves over a certain size will reliably save the lives of several hundred young children each year who are killed when furniture falls on them; not to mention all the lives that would be saved by banning candles and fireplaces; etc. Personal liberty has a great deal of value and I think we should be skeptical of prohibitions even if the data suggests they are "good" for people.
guajalote
9mo ago
Write more, edit yourself more, and find someone who is a strong writer to help you edit your writing. Be merciless and aggressive with the editing. "Kill your babies." Also, read the works of people who are strong writers in the style you want to achieve and emulate them.
guajalote
9mo ago
The smart attack is to outflank him from the populist side by out-promising him in a vague way. Whatever Trump says he'll do (on the economy, immigration, whatever) she'll do even more and better. "I'll do even more and give you more free stuff."
This approach doesn't appeal to me personally at all, and probably doesn't appeal to the type of person who is coaching Kamala for the debate, but it appeals to the average voter and Trump would have a hard time rebutting it.
guajalote
10mo ago
Isn't this a fully general argument that applies to everything? "People are too stupid to make good decisions, so the government should make those decisions for them!" And yet despite the fact that many people are very stupid, the government almost always seems to do a worse job at making decisions than those "stupid" people did. It's the same intuition that leads people to think communism is a great and flawless idea that "just hasn't been implemented properly." It's important to judge policies by how well they work, not how good they sound.
guajalote
10mo ago
The incentive will arrive as soon as people start saying "I'll believe it when I see the negatives."
guajalote
10mo ago
The Jesus and Mohammed pics look like posters for a Marvel movie, like a live action version of South Park's "Super Best Friends." I wish Hollywood had the balls to make something like that.
guajalote
10mo ago
Humans don't behave what way? They don't make false statements and/or invalid arguments in support of positions they sincerely hold?
guajalote
10mo ago
this is only true if the argument includes no personal observations or other claims that might be false.
A person arguing for a claim they genuinely believe in is at least equally capable of (if not more capable of) making up false anecdotes, or exaggerating true ones. In general, personal anecdotes should get very little weight as evidence of anything.
If you're an actual human, you don't want to bother with someone who's likely to make a lot of invalid arguments
A person arguing for a position they truly believe is at least equally (if not more) likely to make invalid arguments, due to blind spots or confirmation bias or a simple desire to win the argument.
guajalote
10mo ago
What difference does it make? We should be evaluating the argument, not the person making it. The sincerity of the person making the argument doesn't change the validity of the argument.
guajalote
11mo ago
I don't think it is, nor should be, against the rules to merely argue in favor of an opinion one does not sincerely hold. If the poster breaks the rules in other ways, that's a different story, but I think it's fine and even valuable for people to be allowed to play devil's advocate.
guajalote
11mo ago
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Say what you said about how you've been quickly promoted within your first couple of years out of college.
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Explain what you accomplished without revealing how you did it; "I came up with a new testing process that reduced our testing costs by 5%" or whatever.
guajalote
11mo ago
Personally I think fresh, high-quality raw fish always tastes better (and has better texture) than cooked fish. Why, in your opinion, would it have been better cooked?
guajalote
11mo ago
The sketch was in reference to Bush, and what made the joke funny was the fact that everyone could tell Moore was not actually joking.
guajalote
11mo ago
It's free speech even if he's not joking. The whole point of free speech is to protect reprehensible speech. Inoffensive speech needs no protections.
guajalote
11mo ago
I would pick Fooled By Randomness over the Black Swan, but either way Taleb deserves a spot for sure.
guajalote
1yr ago
We already have a system where people pay money to receive housing, it's called the housing market. The market will provide plenty of housing if it's simply allowed to do so. We need to get the bureaucratic middlemen out of the way, not incentivize them to get even more involved.
guajalote
1yr ago
Imagine we have as a defendant a man named Charles. He is charged with intentionally killing his wife. The prosecution offers expert witness testimony to the effect of "When men named Charles kill their spouse it tends to be intentionally, rather than accidentally or negligently." That testimony would be fine under this rule, right? The testimony isn't about this Charles who is accused of killing his wife, it's about the abstract category of men named Charles who kill their spouse! Totally different!
It would be fine under the rule, but not fine under Daubert more generally because nobody is a qualified expert in "what people named Charles are thinking." The expert's opinion still has to be backed up by experience, facts, or data and you can move to strike it if it's not.
guajalote
1yr ago
I'm not a criminal lawyer, but I suspect they had to put on the expert because they bore the burden of proof on intent. If they didn't present any evidence of intent, they would presumably lose the criminal equivalent of a post-trial JMOL motion based on lack of evidence.
guajalote
1yr ago
I said "no male friend or relative has ever told me (or acted like) they prefer dumb women," i.e. neither their stated nor revealed preferences seem to indicate an aversion to smart women. In my experience there's no trend of men seeking out dumber women.
what you're really dealing with are blowhards that are socialized around other blowhard men
I don't see what this has to do with intelligence. I know smart men who I'd call "blowhards" and I know dumb men who I'd call "blowhards." And I've never observed a trend of such men preferring dumber women.
I scored in the top fraction of 1% on the SATs, so I don't think I've ever met a woman who "scored a noticeable margin better" than me, but I have dated several women I consider my intellectual equals, and I am currently married to one of them (a successful lawyer who went to one of the best law schools in the US). I have broken up with women who I felt weren't able to keep up with me intellectually because I found them boring.
But you raise an interesting alternative hypothesis, which is that maybe women are the ones selecting "intellectually superior" men to date, and that's why they perceive all the men they date as "needing to feel intellectually superior," because they actually are.
"Men need to feel intellectually superior to women and I got sick of playing dumb a long time ago."
A bit off topic, but I've heard this sentiment from a number of women, yet I've never seen it in real life. I strongly prefer smart women, and no male friend or relative has ever told me (or acted like) they prefer dumb women. Where do women get this idea? It must be rooted in real experiences to some extent, but it's completely alien to me.
My candidate hypotheses:
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Most men like to discuss niche topics of particular interest to them, and women interpret this as a need to feel intellectually superior.
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Most men dislike argumentative or combative women, and such women interpret this as men disliking their intellect rather than their attitude.
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Most men would choose a hot, dumb woman over a smart, ugly woman, and women interpret this as men needing to feel intellectually superior.
Yes, there is a line where prohibition makes sense, but I don't think any human society comes close to crossing that line when it comes to alcohol. This is especially true given that alcohol has proven its ability to coexist alongside the development of advanced human societies over the course of several millennia.
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