jeroboam
1yr ago
I believe this to be true. Certainly it would be justified by China's bad behavior.
My question is, why is Chinese propaganda so bad? Considering how effective tiny Israel is at getting what it wants, China seems like it could do a decent job of manipulating U.S. politicians. But their efforts are clumsy and now both political parties are anti-China (one of the only areas they agree!).
Maybe China feels like it can just ignore the U.S., focus on peripheral allies, and gradually get what it wants through trade and the self-destruction of the U.S. empire due to the successor religion.
jeroboam
1yr ago
Every time this topic comes up someone posts something like this. Every time.
jeroboam
1yr ago
I have a hard time believing that diet efficacy is much greater than zero given that a large percentage of people diet and obesity is only increasing. Is it possible for dieting to have negative efficacy? Perhaps.
Speaking of selection bias, choosing people who have already lost large amounts of weight selects for people who have HUGE amounts of self-control and probably wealth and free time as well. If, even among this august group, only 20% maintain the weight loss that's pretty damning.
I'm not sure where you are getting your alcohol stats, but the number I remember is 8% of AA users successfully quit. And indeed my memory is correct according to this source:
https://www.npr.org/2014/03/23/291405829/with-sobering-science-doctor-debunks-12-step-recovery
There is a large body of evidence now looking at AA success rate, and the success rate of AA is between 5 and 10 percent.
Fortunately, the Sinclair Method exists and seems much more promising. Are there other treatment options that work? Maybe. But I wouldn't trust the stats produced by these groups given the they would be so self-interested.
jeroboam
1yr ago
Doesn't feel that way at all to me. If compliance is < 10%, then the intervention most assuredly doesn't "work" from a public health standpoint.
It's like saying to a smoker "stop smoking" and then saying your intervention is effective. "It would have worked if they had listened".
jeroboam
1yr ago
It could be considered theft of wages.
I work, and rather than immediately spend my money, I save it in a bank account hoping to spend it later. However, due to negative real interest rates, the value of my savings goes down 40%. And what's more, it is reckless government spending that is responsible for much of the devaluation.
Sure I could gamble on stocks, or hoard gold in my basement, but one of the advantages of living in a society is the ability to save my wages for later when I need them. Losing this ability is a strong negative. Just ask people in Argentina or Venezuela.
jeroboam
2mo ago
If this is going to be a discussion where we're simply hurling academic papers at each other that neither of us are going to read, then I see little point in continuing it.
Agreed.
Almost all high-IQ people earn less than $60,000 a year, which is below the U.S. national median household income. And yet see how many low IQ people earn more than these amounts.
This doesn't seem to mesh with the data I've seen from Kirkegaard and others. I simply don't trust academics in the area of IQ research. Nor would I trust Soviet economists.
Looking at the 10 richest Americans, it's clear that all 10 have extreme outlier IQs on the high side. I'd say that all 10 have an IQ of at least 145, but even if we say they are "merely" at 130, the odds that this would happen through luck are less than 1 in a trillion.
I will grant that the presence of career academics might lower the average wage of high IQ people somewhat. This is far outweighed by doctors, lawyers, and software engineers who all (until recently) had to pass through an IQ filter.
In my personal life, I see a clear and obvious relationship between IQ and income. It's going to take a lot of high quality data to convince me to ignore the obvious data in front of my face. You may call that availability bias, I'll call it passing a shit test.
jeroboam
4mo ago
Would you say people can't show outrage over the October 7th attack unless they read up and condemn every atrocity that was committed in the region leading up to that date?
Yes. More specifically, I think the scope of caring should be scaled to the level of the atrocity.
jeroboam
5mo ago
I do wonder--how much of the pushback has been from people making my same mistake?
Probably a lot. Most people view "calls for peace" as "enemy fifth columns".
Making observations about the downvotes is a surefire way to attract more. I'd guess it's because people view it as an expression of entitlement.
That's insightful. I think you're right about the entitlement. In my personal life I'm fairly high status. So how dare people not agree with me on the internet!! I've just gotten a taste of what the typical liberal poster has to deal with on this forum. (Or the typical conservative anywhere else).
I think in general this forum helps me clear up sloppy thinking, even if it's just intellectual masturbation. I feel like this episode was somewhat frustrating because people seemed to be responding with emotion and bile, or failing that, I didn't understand their arguments well enough to change my thinking. Normally when I get pushback, I have made some fundamental mistake. If I did this time, I don't see it.
jeroboam
5mo ago
Putin has shown again and again and again that any compromise will be taken as a sign of weakness that emboldens him to push further. If you wish to minimise human suffering, focus on winning the war and defeating Russia to the point where it stops launching such stupid and wasteful wars in the first place.
I'm generally a fan of not paying the Danegeld. But there are limits.
Both sides in WWI were surely using this logic. "The surest path to end this war and save lives is a swift victory over the bloodthirsty Kaiser / imperialists".
Putin has had his nose bloodied. Badly. And what other Russian-speaking areas are left to take? Meanwhile, tens of thousands are dying each month. In my mind, these very real deaths outweigh any theoretical strategic considerations. This is not an absolute principle, but real-politik that involves actual casualty numbers (high) and actual risk of future Putin action (in my opinion overstated).
Anyone who believes in the absolute principle ends up in the WWI scenario where "beating the enemy" is the only thing that matters while millions die.
jeroboam
6mo ago
I think you're not reading the parent's comment correctly.
Race carries an immense amount of residual predicting power. Example: Compared to a white pathologist, a black pathologist is less likely to enjoy country music.
The parent never said anything about whether race or profession has more predictive power, only that race continues to have predictive power even after we've corrected for everything else.
jeroboam
11mo ago
I never said it wasn't. You have to read comments in context. The olds in the Conservative party support immigration because of "labor shortage" and to prop up the pension system. Young people support it for reasons of social justice.
jeroboam
1yr ago
Sure it is. Not 100% of pregnancies are planned. In fact, it's quite possible that a majority are unplanned.
Maybe not officially, but they absolutely have been controlling (or at least strongly influencing) interest rates via setting the FFR and also QE. If the Fed didn't step up to buy trillions in treasuries during Covid, who would have bought them at the comically low interest rates that were on offer?
And why do you think the market will jump 6% on news about Fed policy? The Fed has immense power.
jeroboam
1yr ago
For most of the 20th century, real interest rates in the United States were positive.
Expanding our window, yes life was nasty, brutish, and short for most of history. But the value to society of sound money is great and its loss should be avoided or at least mourned.
jeroboam
1mo ago
Or comparing Belarus with Estonia.
Yeah, that's the fantasy. But it won't be the reality. Ukraine is a Slavic country that is culturally similar to Russia. Whether they are politically part of Russia that won't change.
Estonia, on the other hand, is demographically most similar to Finland. That's why they got rich and Ukraine didn't.
jeroboam
1mo ago
Great minds think alike I guess. Still, it's probably easier to kill some scientists when you have a green light to bomb as opposed to being sneaky.
jeroboam
2mo ago
You are misunderstanding me completely.
The trades suck. You should get a white collar job if you can. Higher pay, better environment, better benefits, doesn't destroy your body. And absolutely no one is saying "go be a garbage man".
That said, you can get wealthy by owning a business that employs tradesman. You're not out there changing tires, you are managing the people who do. At least until they don't show up for work, lol.
You will get rich on this path, but it's still probably not worth it compared to a nice white collar job that pays 1/2 as much but comes with zero responsibility or lost weekends.
jeroboam
2mo ago
Sure and I’ve seen data that strongly contradicts the claim that IQ is unrelated to income/wealth. I just don’t want to play the “here’s a study” game in a field that is deeply ideological and corrupt. So I revert to the evidence that is directly in front of my face.
jeroboam
4mo ago
I apologize for my snark earlier.
I don't understand the objection. An affluent person doing something for $1 billion is different than a person in abject poverty doing that same thing to survive.
jeroboam
5mo ago
No, it's not "most". Maybe 5 pounds of water weight if that.
I've been off the diet for 3 weeks. Trust me when I say that my glycogen stores are fully replenished. I've been eating like a pig. I'm still 8 pounds lighter and my waistline is smaller.
jeroboam
6mo ago
I think the consensus is something like 1-5 reps for strength. 6-10 for hypertrophy. I'm not sure what more than 10 gets you and it might be considered fuckarounditis.
jeroboam
7mo ago
If you truly are obese, have Type II diabetes, and can't get access to Ozempic, have you considered a ketogenic diet?
I've been doing it for a couple months now, and the results have been incredible on both my waistline and on the scale. And I'm loving the food too. So delicious.
For me, the need is not that huge. I was only slightly overweight before and I'm doing it mostly out of vanity and for sports performance. For you, the benefits of a keto diet could be life-changing.
I know that pretty much everyone who is overweight wants to poo poo the keto diet, giving excuses not to do it, and reasons why it won't work for them. But it does work for almost everyone who tries it. I'd give it a shot!
Let's do some math.
Let's say that we are voting on Twitter and that an evil god makes this poll binding. Let's say that that 1 million vote and that every result from 40-60% is equally likely.
So there are 200,000 possible voting outcomes. And in only 1 of these will your vote be the difference maker.
By voting blue, you have a 1/200,000 chance of saving 500,000 people, and a 1/2 chance of killing yourself. So you will save 2.5 lives on average but die 0.5 times yourself.
Is your life worth that of 5 random strangers? It's worth debating. I think most people would not kill themselves to save 5 people, but at the same time would not kill 5 people to save themselves either.
As your choice involves potentially killing yourself to save others, I'm not sure your choice to vote blue on Twitter parses from an intuitive sense. The only time in which voting blue would seem to make sense would be if you knew the vote was very near 50% and you had extreme leverage to save people.
Aren't French and Italian breakfasts essentially dessert as well? In France the standard is to serve a 2 ounce coffee which comes with not one, but two, gigantic sugar packets enough to supersaturate the coffee. Paired, of course, with a pastry.
The distinguishing characteristic of the American and English breakfasts would seem to be their gigantic size, not their sugar level.
Yeah, this makes sense to me. China could easily manipulate U.S. political opinion by equating all criticism of the CCP with racism and playing the victim card. It's certainly worked for others. The reason that they don't is because this doesn't play well with a Chinese audience, the only people they really care about.
I could be convinced that, whereas Westerners want to rule the whole world (or at least rule their minds and souls), China is content to merely rule over all ethnically Chinese people.
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