justmotteingaround
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User ID: 2002
justmotteingaround
8mo ago
I don't think the solution to the problems of the poor is "kill the poor". But it's a classic pro-abortion talking point, isn't it?
I mean, that's the least charitable interpretation of: allow people to answer the widely debated philosophical question of the moral worth of a fetus for themselves, all while providing society with a list of known benefits. The implied eugenics (initially a progressive cornerstone) is just a bonus imo.
There are probably some good heuristics to cut through dubious social science publications, from simply ignoring it, to ignoring journalism about specific studies while perusing the study yourself. It seems the op-ed writer didn't understand some basic points about the study. He seemed critical of the (not unusual) large amounts of screening/filtering of participants. This only means that it isn't a study about homelessness in general, which isn't necessarily good or bad. The NP author also seemed to imply a (not unusual) about 50% loss to follow up. This didn't happen. The half of people they lost contact with were never enrolled in the first place. They did exclude people with severe drug and mental problems for ethical issues, fearing overdose. Nevertheless, ~15% of the participants had moderate drug problems, and about 50% had mental health diagnoses. So this seems to make the case for ignoring journalists. The study results seemed to indicated that giving a well screened subset of homeless reduces the State and saves money. Its one study. And I'm reminded of this Oren Cass article on "Policy Based Evidence Making". So while I'm optimistic, I'm only about 2% swayed. More study is needed.
https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/policy-based-evidence-making
that you often reject social science research or findings unless personally having vetted them
Well, the easiest person to fool is myself, so I'm generally skeptical of unreplicated social science (there have been some fantastic, salacious recent scandals!). Plenty of liberals write books and papers making the case for skepticism of social science, so I just mention those books, the reproducibility crisis, the math behind it, things like Bem (iirc there is also a study that proves you can age one year backwards), the recent scandals, etc, and the conversations are pretty normal.
justmotteingaround
9mo ago
When the PODUS, or any higher ranking politician, calls someone to tell them "The ballots are corrupt and that's illegal... Its more illegal for you than it is for them. You know what they did and you're not reporting it, and that is a criminal offense. You can't let that happen. That's a big risk to you... And you're letting it happen. I'm notifying you that you are letting it happen. And all I want to do is find X votes" just put them in jail.
justmotteingaround
8mo ago
Give it a listen and see if it does anything for you: https://youtube.com/watch?v=sqSA-SY5Hro
Honestly not much, but it wasn't written for me. Unlike the wonderful sound, the lyrics resonate like a laundry-list of complaints. It's too prosaic to be subversive. Plus I think it misidentifies the problem as rich men north of Richmond, and not the local power brokers enthusiastically elected and re-elected. But the song is overwhelmingly well-liked, so I'm glad for the artist.
Someone below linked the Antifascist Blues. While I found that song more catchy and clever, I have some of the same criticisms.
justmotteingaround
9mo ago
When the POTUS asks someone to overturn election results immediately after falsely notifying them that they are committing a serious crime if they don't, just chuck them in a jail cell for a decade to teach them about reckless disregard for the truth, and intimidating election officials.
justmotteingaround
8mo ago
This still seems like special pleading. Perhaps you can argue/explain to me how its not. As I see it, we can figure out chess, engineer billions of transistors per sq in, manipulate genomes, program LLMs with billions of tokens, perform a million-trillion operations every second. Therefore its not unreasonable to suspect that we can make good climate models.
justmotteingaround
1yr ago
While I don't expect the public to follow the plot, both incidents do have quantitative and qualitative differences, though I suspect this will become less true as time goes on. As far as I know, Team Biden found about 12 documents and handed them over within 24 hours, whereas Team Trump had around 300 and dragged his feet for months.
Anyone crying "where is the raid" is either trying to score political points in bad faith (which is fine if that's the game), or is not thinking too hard.
the President is deflecting and denying rather than crying “witch hunt”
He appears to be front-running it, if anything. Now that the story is (finally) out, he said
[The people who found the documents] did what they should have done. They immediately called the [National Archives] … turned them over to the Archives, and I was briefed about this discovery and surprised to learn that there were any government records that were taken there to that office," the president added. "But I don't know what's in the documents. My lawyers have not suggested I ask what documents they were
justmotteingaround
9mo ago
That's great and I don't want to take anything away from a fantastic accomplishment. I do want to provide some useful info on your diet plan. There is lots of good published studies on which weight loss strategies lead to long-term decreases in fat mass (youtuber jeff nippard covers a lot of the science if interested). In short, you want to aim for an average weekly calorie consumption of about 10% below maintenance, with weekends eating at maintenance, and weekdays consuming 14% below maintenance, with 2-3 times a week resistance training, and protein consumption of 1.8-3g protein per kg bodyweight. Cardio is not strictly necessary. Low impact cardio is recommended. So that is a brief description on how to increase and keep lean body mass gains. I think calorie tracking apps are a good idea for the first few months. Keto is fine for many, but I would bump the calories, take the fat off more slowly, and do something to retain muscle. That way when you're done dieting down, you're most likely to keep the gains you made. Whatever you choose, best of luck and congrats!
justmotteingaround
2mo ago
No I mean using that a explanation as a sorting or policy heuristic. Suboptimal imo. Take the analogy of gender differences and firefighters. Biology explains the difference. All else equal, males will make better firefighters in many circumstances. Is biology the best policy tool are political talking point. I'd argue no. Are there females who could make the cut? Sure. And hiring differences in firefighters has successfully defended against disparate impact (people will argue the test doesn't demonstrate a necessity, but I digress). There is prob a better analogy using evolution (explanatory) to sort or guide something is less optimal than extant sorting or guiding policies. Hope I'm clear enough. But yes, HBD is not a heuristic, but the OP opened that analogy.
If you want to say "HBD not racism or culture explains much of the disparate outcomes", then yeah, fine. I agree. Nevertheless, I'd argue that taking about it in political or policy debates is usually suboptimal imo because the flack (just and unjust), better tools, the fact that society is often sorted that way anyhow. HBD could really illuminate understanding of reality.
justmotteingaround
2mo ago
Oooof. That's rough. Yeah, I'd say you're at the theorycraft stage. Add some info to your post. I'm still unsure exactly what your symptoms are, how they present, your clinical history, and current status.
I'm stumped, and this is way beyond my pay grade anyhow. I perused the "The Mechanical Basis of ME/CFS" post. Interesting stuff from deep down a rabbit hole. And from your other comments its seems like you know how things work. Best of luck!
justmotteingaround
8mo ago
Well I guess everyone is opaque about "crossing the Rubicon". Assuming Hanania is honest, we don't need to guess about what he thinks because he responded to the huffpo piece on his substack. He finds his old views repugnant; largely explained by immature, emotional reasoning. His solution was intellectual advancement, and personal development. After looking at the data he realized hbd is true, and small-l liberalism is the best path forward.
I think this sums of where he was when he was writing anonymously.
A young LARPer with a tendency to get carried away with certain arguments, enamored by the romantic idea of grappling with supposedly suppressed ancient truths, simply couldn’t handle that level of nuance.
justmotteingaround
9mo ago
This article is an semi-coherent jumble of truth mixed together with ludicrousness.
That's basically my take on everything I've read on amren. Extremely well written and inspiring, but the claims and leaps of logic that follow are indeed ludicrous. I understand the allure of the narrative, but trying to map it on to the world as I know it leaves be utterly bewildered.
justmotteingaround
1yr ago
Jews and non-Jews will always naturally develop into hostility.
Only if we keep playing the identity politics game. Erroneously ascribing group traits to individuals, or conflating group criticism with bigotry, is the poison pill which melts brains. For example, its possible to criticize aspects of 'black culture' (population level) without impugning individuals. I'm not claiming people will interpret such criticism charitably, but that's because they swallowed the poison pill. It's possible to notice that the Jews are successful without spite for members of that group. It might be expedient to simply join a different tribe (American, the middle class, Democrats, Republicans, Unitarians, (who, coincidentally, may have the highest IQ's)). But this is only because people keep playing identity politics.
justmotteingaround
9mo ago
I've actually wondered how public schools dodged the bullet of horrific pedo scandal that rightfully hit the Catholic church and the Boy Scouts.
It's probably way less common on a per-capita basis. For whatever reason, males commit ~90% of child sexual abuse. The younger the students, the more overwhelmingly female the teachers. And unlike schools, The Catholic Church and Boy Scouts have structures where the highest ranking authority figure can create significant alone time with children. The Sandusky scandal was similar.
justmotteingaround
10mo ago
It was amazing how much that question pissed off my acquaintances.
Seems more highly predictable than amazing. I'd save such questions for a more appropriate social context (ie here, among a different group), even if they're interesting. To borrow an imperfect analogy from the imperfect gender debate: momness is a spectrum. If the kids, father, and law all view the stepmom as a mom, then yeah, stepmom is pretty much a mom. Self ID doesn't work here because so much of momness is contained in others. Steven Dubner of Freakonomics fame has talked about adopting a kid (after having many kids the usual way). The kid was adopted near birth, and he says it was just as special.
justmotteingaround
7mo ago
Counterpoint: history is largely a one-way conversation of destroying traditions in favor of such progress. Preserving tradition is a balancing act for the more necessary goal of maintaining the the systems and institutions which beget the traditions. Its 60% compromise.
I don't think the Catholic Church is at a point where blessing gay unions is necessary to optimize the institution, but it's clearly now in their Overton window.
Adding to your comment from a linked article:
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NYC has 3.8M city income tax payers
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Average burden to each of the 41k top 1%: $18,000
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Average burden to each of the 410k 10-1%: $1,141
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Average burden to each of the 3.3M 0-90%: $180
Those 3 points lay on a graduated curve, but still. Oooof.
The NYC budget for FY 2023 is 37B, so the settlement (probably paid out over time) represents 5% of this years budget.
Also notable: NYC/NYS spent over decade fighting the case. The state was detached at some point. The case originated in the 1996's, and became a class-action. The implied argument was that the test was not designed to be g-loaded, nor was it confirmed to be a predictor of classroom success, which lead to unfair disparate impact. In one item, applicants were asked to explain the meaning of an Andy Warhol painting. 90% of white test takers passed the 80 question test, while 53% of Blacks and 50% of Latinos passed.
justmotteingaround
7mo ago
The people who say weed is some harmless wonder plant are annoying.
Agreed, but its worth considering that "weed is harmless" is a considerably better approximation of the truth than weeds classification as a schedule 1 nacotric in the US.
justmotteingaround
1yr ago
I would prefer that he's just a hypocrite tbh
I thought he was being pretty clear that he is just a hypocrite? He tweeted about his banning Kanye, as well as the flight tracker guy (who he specifically said he wouldn't ban). A suspicious amount of accounts which merely mock him have been banned.
justmotteingaround
5mo ago
I fly international a lot. My strategies work for me and I have my typical routes mastered. Timing your sleep/wake cycle on arrival is most important.
Melatonin is great on paper, doesn't seem to do much for me. I time caffeine, cardio, and sleep so I'll be most tired at the local bedtime on the first few nights. (Example: NYC to Switzerland takes off 6pm, so I get up at 3 am in NYC, binge coffee, work, take off 6PM, and I can sleep a few hours on the plane. Arrive 8am, caffeine around 10am and I'm fresh for the whole afternoon. I make sure to to push through to at least 8pm and then pass out for the night.)
Never stay up too late. Plan everything so you're tired as hell for bedtime the first few nights. Try to avoid caffeine after 12pmish the first few days after arrival so you can sleep well later. If you absolutely have to nap, do some math to calculate if you'll be tired that night, and set SEVERAL timers. Otherwise, just push through. Get on a regular schedule. Cardio/loooooong walks are great if you have too much energy and its getting late. You need pass out and sleep well at the normal bedtime for the first few nights!!!
As for the planes themselves, noise cancelling headphones if you got them. I drink at least 1L water every 2 hours minimum. I go to the back and have them refill my airport plastic bottle. Nobody else does this and its crazy. Planes are so dry. A good book or magazine is the best to pass the time. I have a kindle with 100's of books to read or re-read, and I'll put boring ones down in search of something that is great for long trips. Download any potentially interesting podcasts before takeoff. Series are great to binge. (I recommend alphabet boys, especially season 2). I've never had a 7 hour layover. The lounge might be worth it. Going into town might be worth it just to have a mini adventure, but you have to like random stuff like that (ie not find it stressful).
Nice deadlift! At ~23sec I saw your hips come up first. I don't use a belt, but I think I take a deeper breath and expand my stomach more to fill out my leverages, then brace. Perhaps something to play around with. You may want to mix in straps just to put more attention elsewhere (hips, leverages, whatever). Just some ideas.
justmotteingaround
8mo ago
Right, but this line of reasoning could be used to dismiss as inaccurate anything sufficiently complex and niche. The human body, the universe, and AI are complex, but people don't dismiss medicine, astrophysics, and LLM's because of complexity. What is special or unique about decades of climate science that gives people pause?
I don't want to put words in peoples mouths. If people think decades of climate science is uniquely dubious because they reckon its just too complex, that's fine. Special pleading is an informal fallacy anyhow. OP found climate science to be nonsense, and the idea of climate modeling to be outlandish, and didn't elaborate. But saying this isn't special pleading by pointing out complexity is a non-starter. It's rare that, for decades, 90+% of trained scientists agree on some domain specific thing in a heavily quantitative field, yet popular sentiment demurs without easily explaining why.
justmotteingaround
8mo ago
Thanks. I am trying to ignore specifics and make an inductive argument about science in general to shed light on why climate science appears special (ie: most biologist claim that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell, physicists say the universe has a speed limit, meteorologists say 80% chance it'll rain in 3 days etc). Normally, people just go "oh okay". AFAIKT, some 95% of climate scientists are saying "yep, the climate is projected to warm for x and y reasons" and yet many people are have been uniquely skeptical for ~50 years despite increasing consensus among people who have studied the science thousands of hours. I curious what the reason for this is.
Personally, I think the hypothesis is the expected one. Humans have added a trillion tonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere in 200 years, and its trivial to prove CO2 is a greenhouse gas. I'd expect something to happen, probably warming, although this need not be the case, and I don't really care either way. All I want to know is what makes climate science uniquely dubious from the highest vantage point, without specifics (mostly for practical reasons).
I haven't followed this much at all. I don't disagree with the points you made, but at a 5 minute glance it seems that the climate models are useful. Even if they weren't, skepticism in the face of an increasing consensus in a quantitative field over decades begs for an explanation.
justmotteingaround
8mo ago
As an aside, I still think chess fits. I don't even think we know how many games of chess are possible. Humans recently approximated a Go engine - something people long claimed was too complex to ever be done, much like chess. Models + compute can beat humans at games of unimaginable complexity.
Regardless, even if chess is a bad analogy, admitting that doesn't gets me out special pleading that climate science is not only special in its complexity, but also special in that thousands of people with PhD's, from Montana to Mongolia, overwhelmingly agree that its possible to model climate usefully.
What reason do I have to disbelieve climate science that doesn't also apply to designing bleeding edge microchips, or medicine, or applied physics, or the improvements seen in weather forecasting? I'm trying to argue myself into climate science skepticism inductively and/or by way of inferences. A strong quantitative scientific consensus about cause and effect is usually a good bet. What makes climate science different?
The only thing I can come up with is that climate science is more akin to a year-long weather forecast (ie cannot be computed in P time because well understood chaotic conditions). But then why do such a large amount knowledgeable keep spending money on the practical applicability of climate models? I'm back at special pleading that science is a liar in this case in particular.
justmotteingaround
1yr ago
Great idea. My guess is general lament of the SC, accusations of racism and/or white supremacy, calls for solidarity. Certainty: medium. Time spent: 3 minutes.
Results: totally wrong. The top 10 reader picks seemed to endorse reform, make AA a class issue, and talked about the unfairness to Asians.
Oh I totally agree with this assessment. This was true when Murray published The Bell Curve, which is milquetoast compared to HBD (ie it was explicitly agnostic to genetic factors). The radioactivity remains. HBD is the path of most resistance, justly or otherwise, so the realpolitik renders it almost useless in practice. Any substitute is already superior. Moreover, I would argue that HBD has plenty of epistemic problems, which get only magnified in individualistic societies.
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