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
8mo ago
It's one of the biggest libertarian "viral moments" I can remember. Not only is it terribly authoritarian, it's a ridiculous inversion of priorities and waste of resources. We can start talking about euthanizing squirrels over "rabies" concerns after the government has successfully euthanized every rat in NYC. And treating a squirrel as some kind of dangerous exotic pet makes zero sense. There's a long American tradition of owning pet squirrels; Warren Harding had one named Pete living with him in the Whitehouse. This whole thing is just quintessentially un-American.
guajalote
3mo ago
I have to disagree with the premise that too much liberalism created the problem. The solution is more liberalism: legalize gun ownership and deregulate housing. This approach has proven itself effective in the real world, it doesn't cost anything, and it doesn't require an authoritarian state.
guajalote
1mo ago
I am confident there are many insights out there that remain to be "discovered" that will seem obvious in retrospect. So much of the history of human progress is discovering obvious (in retrospect) insights. Even something as simple as wheels on luggage. People pushed luggage around on wheeled carts for decades before figuring out we should just put wheels on the damn suitcases. Insights from Taleb and Mandelbrot about tail risks and black swans are another good example of something "obvious" that it took smart people a long time to come to terms with. It's really hard to see obvious things until they are pointed out.
guajalote
9mo ago
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.
guajalote
6mo ago
Wokeness only appealed to a segment of the elites and was unappealing to most non-elites. So wokeness gained power quickly but ran out of steam because it lacked any grassroots support. On the other hand, Christianity started out as a religion of the proletariat and by the time it trickled up to the elite of Roman society it had massive grassroots support. I think that's a key difference.
guajalote
7mo ago
What's the latest thinking on addressing high cholesterol? My mom has high cholesterol (70 years old, active, not overweight, otherwise in excellent health). She and her doctor are working off what I understand to be outdated thinking on the subject. For example she is avoiding healthy foods like eggs with high cholesterol content, but my understanding is the latest studies suggest no clear link between eggs and high cholesterol. It seems like the latest consensus is to avoid red meats, sugar, and processed foods. Her doctor has also suggested statins, but my understanding is that there isn't much if any evidence to support their effectiveness. What do the doctors of the motte suggest for an otherwise healthy person with high cholesterol?
guajalote
8mo ago
Even if the owner murders babies I don't see how that justifies killing the squirrel. Seems like an unrelated issue.
guajalote
8mo ago
The government regularly ignores well-documented violations of the law, particularly where those violations are non-violent (e.g. speeding, immigration, drugs). Given that the government doesn't have the ability to enforce all the laws all the time, it makes sense to deliberately ignore inconsequential violations and focus on consequential ones.
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
3mo ago
Houston's homelessness rate is about 30 per 100K. Denmark's homelessness rate is about 112 per 100K.
guajalote
4mo ago
Judges are almost never impeached because the federal judiciary has an internal process where if a judge is found to have done something bad after an investigation, the judiciary will recommend that the judge voluntarily resign. The judge will almost always comply with the resignation "suggestion," because if he does not, the judiciary will recommend impeachment to congress. Such a recommendation carries a great deal of weight when your own colleagues in the judiciary think you deserve to be impeached. So the impeachment rate is low because there is an internal process that pushes judges who would otherwise get impeached to voluntarily step down.
guajalote
7mo ago
Because if it were, you would have no problem with people becoming addicted to drugs and other substances.
I have no problem with people becoming addicted to drugs and other substances. I'm not saying it's a good idea, but I have no problem with it because it's none of my business how they choose to live their lives.
The places in the US with high rates of homelessness (e.g. San Francisco) are places with restrictive gun laws and restrictive housing and building regulations. The places with liberal gun laws and liberal housing regulations have low rates of homelessness. It's very consistent.
Houston's housing first policies are good, but they only work because the baseline rate of homelessness is already extremely low. This is mostly due to cheap housing. When the lowest tiers of housing are so affordable that someone with drug and mental health problems can afford to live there, you end up with far fewer homeless people. You also avoid negative feedback loops where, once someone becomes homeless, their lives tend to spiral and their issues get worse. When housing is attainable for even the lowest income people, it provides a sort of "ladder" people can climb to get their lives in order.
Also, just to clarify, I am not arguing that liberal gun laws reduce homelessness. I'm arguing they make homeless people far less likely to hassle or assault people because you never know who's packing heat. For example, you will see some homeless people on public transit in Houston, but I have literally never seen one approach other riders to ask for money, make a bunch of noise, or threaten anyone, all of which are common behaviors in other cities.
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
8mo ago
So should we burn down murderers' houses? What's the point of destroying property as punishment for a "crime" (which in this case is not actually a crime and which no one has been convicted of yet)?
guajalote
1mo ago
When people refer to the "woke right" they're referring to right-wing people who behave like woke people in the sense that they try to censor, cancel, and thought-police those who disagree with them. They aren't saying the woke right is politically woke, they're saying they use the same illiberal tactics as the woke.
guajalote
3mo ago
It should not be legal to shoot someone on the subway except to defend against deadly force. But the deterrent effect of guns extends beyond these situations. People have broad incentives to respect others' boundaries when it's unclear who has a gun and under what circumstances they might be willing to use it. I never carry a gun, but I look like I could be carrying one, and that by itself changes the way people treat me and others in public.
I can't conclusively prove causation, but the observable correlations are so strong it should at least give you pause to consider they might be causal.
guajalote
11mo 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
1mo ago
Airports and train stations have always been perfect use cases for wheeled luggage, but nobody started using them until the late 90s/early 00s. I remember as a child in the early 90s every airport had huge racks of carts you could rent for $0.25 because nobody had wheels on their suitcases.
guajalote
7mo ago
The Number Needed To Treat for statins is about 138.
I believe her LDL is around 135.
I would suspect that given standard monetary values of QALY and DALY in the West, it would be a net positive given how damn cheap drugs are.
Assuming they actually prolong life. My understanding is that "statin clinical trials have shown marginally significant benefits on mortality" at best over 5 years, and there's no good evidence they reduce long-term morality. That's why I came here to ask the question, I'm curious if there's newer or better evidence to support their effectiveness. If they don't work, then we're just risking side-effects for no gain.
As for eggs, I have more or less given up on attempting to understand nutritional science, there's hardly a more cursed and confounded field on the planet.
I get that nutrition is hard to study, but do you really have no opinions about this topic as a doctor? Shouldn't lifestyle changes be the first line of treatment for this sort of thing? If you had to recommend the optimal diet to a patient with high cholesterol, what would it be?
I ask this because my mother is something of a health nut and will follow credible diet and lifestyle advice religiously. When her doctor told her to cut out red meat, butter, and eggs, she completely eliminated these things from her diet. If a doctor told her eating nothing but unseasoned boiled potatoes was the key to lower cholesterol, she'd eat nothing but unseasoned boiled potatoes. On the other hand, her doctor has not told her to avoid things like processed sugars or margarine, so she still eats plenty of that stuff.
So I'm interested in trying to set her up with the best evidence-based diet and lifestyle interventions possible. Since she is going to religiously follow some sort of diet program regardless, it may as well be the best possible program.
Finances willing, I'd put very many people on GLP-1 agonists, so if granny could do with losing weight and not just cholesterol, that's my recommendation.
She is not at all overweight, goes on long hikes/jogs daily, skis, bikes, and is otherwise very physically active for a 70 year old.
guajalote
8mo ago
It "makes sense" from the government's perspective to do what you're describing. It "makes sense" from society's perspective to do what I'm describing.
guajalote
8mo ago
Guns have valid uses, recreational drugs have less of a claim
What valid use does this website have? It's largely recreational and a drain on user's productivity, a bit like weed. Should the government ban the Motte?
guajalote
11mo 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.
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.
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