justmotteingaround
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User ID: 2002
justmotteingaround
8mo ago
he believed those "results" weren't legitimate at all!
And that illustrates why the legal standard of "reckless disregard for the truth" exists. Such concepts put limiting principles on credulity. Without such limiting principles a future president could claim they believe they are legally Emperor for life, while amassing functionaries to carry out that goal. If if such an attempt were to fail, they could hide behind "well my lawyers were saying it was true, and I sincerely believed them, so I declared martial law." Elites have enough power, and I'm fine holding all rulers to something like a "reckless disregard for the truth" standard. At a minimum, they should end up in court.
justmotteingaround
1yr ago
The goalposts were
police reform is now inextricably linked in the minds of at least half the populace total police abolition, lighter sentences, less bail, decriminalising hard drugs, violent criminals out on the streets by lunchtime, rioting, arson, looting, violent takeover of city streets and public areas and anti-white ideology
The data indicate that, for most of these things, public support falls a far south 50%. ~85% of Americans want police funding to remain the same or increase. More people want it to increase substantially than to decrease substantially.
justmotteingaround
1yr ago
thus they were far less secure
This doesn't follow from the given. Allegedly they were lost in some locked closed that nobody went in and out of for years. Something like that. The FBI had security footage from Mar al Lago of people going in and out of where the documents were stored.
The fact that team Trump was adversarial to the classification people doesn't make his conduct bad.
It course it makes his conduct worse. I mean, whats worse: unknowingly keeping a work laptop, then giving immediately when found; or, unknowingly keeping a work laptop, and refusing to give it back, and forcing the police to come get it?
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
I think this is where HBD is misapplied as a heuristic if the goal is a colorblind meritocratic society. There are 40M blacks in the US. Plenty have merit for various jobs, things get weird at the tails, but there is a skew is already roughly reflected in broad achievement. From a quora post "what is the IQ of blacks"
"It’s about one standard deviation lower than whites or about 85. In practice, this means that individuals at the upper end of the curve are massively underrepresented. Look at two rather meritocratic statistics: 1) about 1% of NIH grants are awarded to black scientists 2) about 1% of CPAs in America are black. In either of these examples, there isn’t a big push to have candidates get external support or preferences (e.g. medical school or Ivy undergrad) so blacks are underrepresented by about 10 fold, which is what would be expected by a bell curve shifted to the left by one standard deviation.
Tally for black achievements (14% of U.S. Population):
1% NIH Grants awarded 1% of CPAs 1% of Fortune 500 CEOs (19 out of 1,800 recorded over history) 1% of American billionaires 1.8% of Law firm partners (virtually zero 0% at big NYC law firms) 2% of U.S. Air Force pilots 0% of Nobel prizes in Physics, medicine, chemistry ~1% of Nobel prizes in Economics (1 in history, note some years multiple recipients creating fuzzy math) 0% of Fields Medalists (considered the closest to Nobel for math) Another way to look at the issue of black intelligence is to pick an IQ required for a demanding job and see how many individuals fall in that category. Some researchers have suggested it takes an IQ of 130 to become a professor, senior executive, physician, tech entrepreneur. One could argue this is a floor, not an average. In the general population, about 2.5% of people would have an IQ this high. If the distribution curve is shifted to the left one SD, only 0.13% or about 1/17th as much (1/17th of 2.5%) of the population reaches this level. This suggests only one out of 770 American blacks would likely be capable of such professions.
This is all explicitly legal (a non-arbitrary business necessity must be demonstrated for disparate achievement to be perfectly legal. Standardized tests are fine). So you'd want to build merit based coalitions which doesn't lump ill defined groups together. HBD is less useful because its too broad. Coleman Hughes has collected wildly disparate outcomes at the group level within the squishy race categories, and HBD misses all of that. There are certainly edge cases of unqualified candidates being pushed forward to everyones detriment (such as the Barpod sadfunny ATC episode), but such instances have been challenged in the courts repeatedly, with ruling which work with HBD anyhow (ie demonstrating the necessity of disparate outcomes for organizational functioning).
justmotteingaround
2mo ago
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.
justmotteingaround
7mo ago
We should give climate science whatever veneration it earns. AFAIKT, it has produced results and useful predictions, but this is largely immaterial to what I'm talking about.
If there was Blah Science, researched for decades by tens of thousands of smart people who overwhelmingly agree that X is true, I'd bet on X being true.
My point: most people would bet on X being true in normal circumstances. People seem to make an exception for climate science. I'm curious why people make this exception.
I'm also curious if there are any other broad fields where this pattern holds. Things surrounding nutrition come to mind. Perhaps there are many, and what I'm calling special pleading is quite common.
justmotteingaround
1yr ago
No, I mean that these positions are as likely to ascent to power as the Mises wing Libertarian party. Sure, some people probably want their neighborhoods looted and burned to the ground. I'm not especially worried about them gaining a consensus.
justmotteingaround
1yr ago
hell, all of education
Yeah. Something like 90+% are liberals, which is super unhealthy. I imagine its not that different in Hollywood.
Also what do you mean by this?
I think echo chambers like themotte have a skewed perception of reality ie lots of doomerism over the intellectually bankrupt ideology that can broadly be described as "wokeism". It's a problem, but polling suggests its near the fringes.
The nation is approximately 50% Democrat; 50% Republican. The commenter I was responding to was hesitant to endorse legislation he agrees with because it is too ideologically aligned with people who want to see more arson, looting, and violent crime. This strikes me as insane, and, at the very least, is contradicted by whatever data we have. Unsurprisingly, only a small minority of people want their neighborhoods burned to the ground while they are hunted by violent criminals.
justmotteingaround
1yr ago
Which is most still do and
At the height of the violence, support for "reasonable" violence peaked at 22%. Without looking I'd be willing to bet fewer than 10% of congressmen endorsed violence at that time. Would also bet that the majority decried it when asked.
Claims that majorities genuinely want, will want, or recently wanted riots, violence, arson, looting, and violent criminals released by lunchtime does not comport with the data. Its an irrational belief in total contradiction to the lives claim they want.
justmotteingaround
1yr ago
I'm sure exceptions to the rule exist, but we should deal in probabilities and stive for accurate piors. The president ran on being against the death penalty, and was elected. In my examples, I'm talking about sub 20% popular support. I don't know what it was in France.
justmotteingaround
7mo ago
This could be said in response to innumerable scientific claims. Climate science is plausibly knowable enough to model well. But I'm not making any claims what climate science says. I'm asking what, at a general level, is unique to climate science that garners a special amount of skepticism?
justmotteingaround
7mo ago
That is trying to understand a really complex system
This is practically a definition for 'science'.
Well, they have a vested interest in it, no?
This is largely true for most fields of science.
the system as such began a long long time ago and we don't know much about that period.
Similarly, this is also true for most of science.
I can't find anything that makes these arguments apply to climate science, but not biology, medicine, chemistry, physics, etc.
Eg. Do we really know bacteria cause disease? Researches have a vested interest in continued research, but the proposed mechanisms are beyond complex, based on biology that began over a billion years ago.
that they at least produce the predicted results
Apparently climate models have been, on average, predictive. But this is not the kind of inductive claim I'm searching for.
weather forecasting as I see it isn't much better than an old man and bad knees.
Apparently, these are accurate 75% of the time inside of 5 days. This would be easy to disprove. Again, not an inductive claim. As an aside, if interested I'd be willing to bet money that weather forecasts are about as accurate as 30 sec. of googling led me to believe they are.
that a myriad of special interest have their hands in all kinds of places
I'm extremely mindful of this regarding climate policy.
justmotteingaround
1yr ago
but claim to have purchased yourself
This breaks the analogy because there is no legal theory where Trump can claim he owned the property, especially after he was no longer president. He didn't create the documents. His office may have, but it was probably created by the IC. Regardless, it's spelled out that he can't keep any of it after he leaves office. Sure, it might be mingled with personal effects which need to be separated, but he is legally required to give back State property. Of course he is allowed to dispute that he is allowed to keep it, but he can't refuse to show why.
justmotteingaround
1yr ago
Imagine describing to an alien that the official policy of the US is to abolish the police, decrimnalize hard drugs, endorse looting, arson, rioting, the release of violent criminals, and the violent take over of streets. Do you think they would have a accurate picture of policy in the USA?
justmotteingaround
2mo ago
depend on either their outcomes being race-neutral
I may be wrong but I think this is explicitly untrue legally. AFAIK, if you can demonstrate a necessity of hiring in a way that causes a disparate impact, and your methods were not arbitrary (standardized tests are usually used as a defense), then it's perfectly legal.
Are there people making ignorant or bad faith cases about the arbitrariness of the standardized tests? Of course. But as far as I can tell, they lose in court.
justmotteingaround
6mo ago
The Church has changed traditions over time in order to maintain itself, increase its robustness, promote antifragility, etc. As an institution, the Catholic Church probably isn't amenable to rapid, radical change. (hence the slow move away from a Latin mass, the gradual lack of condemnation for charging interest on loans (Islam has created a bizarre, less efficient workaround which probably cost them economically), and the explicit condemnation of slavery being late to the party). Dozens more I think, but I know very little about the history of religion.
At some point, it may be optimal for the continuance of the Church to bless gay unions. In a few decades to a few hundred years. But also maybe it will never be optimal. However, imagine a contemporary Church that continued to argue, as I think Acquanias did (and I'm not sure if he was Catholic, but just as an example), that owning people as slaves was fine so long as you treated them well. That would be bad for the institution today. I'm not chiding the Church for being "late to the party". It's the kind of institution that should change slowly, cautiously, and with much debate.
Why its relevant: As I said, I'm pretty ignorant of the history of religion (its by far my worst Jeopardy! category). Therefore, I don't know how democratic religious have fared compared to more top-down structures, and I can't analyze the causal factors in a religions outcomes as institutions (for example, Buddhism and Hinduism are about twice as old as Christianity, but I don't know their institutional structures).
"we must make a fundamental change to [institution] to appeal to more progressive audiences, and grow our membership" scenarios play out in a non-destructive way,
My view is that this debate is the long arc of history: how much progress, and how fast? A balance must be stuck according the function of the institution. The US got rid of slavery, let women vote, allowed for constitutional review by SCOTUS, etc. Perhaps its not as robust as everyone would like, but it has worked out pretty well by historical standards. Companies can change faster than governmental bodies, which can change faster than spiritual institutions. Change too fast, you blow it up. Change too slowly, society moves on.
justmotteingaround
6mo 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.
justmotteingaround
7mo 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
with total police abolition, lighter sentences, less bail, decriminalising hard drugs, violent criminals out on the streets by lunchtime, rioting, arson, looting, violent takeover of city streets and public areas and anti-white ideology
Good news: Most of these positions have effectively zero public support, with the possible exception of bail reform.
This poll was done at the height of the Floyd riots.
https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/news-polls/reuters-ipsos-civil-unrest-george-floyd-2020-06-02
Four in five Americans (82%) report that peaceful protests are an appropriate response to the killing of an unarmed man by police, while 22% say that violence and unrest is an appropriate response.
A similar number of Americans (79%) say that the property damage caused by some demonstrators undermines the original intent of the protest’s call for justice in George Floyd’s death.
Republicans (83%) and Democrats (77%) agree that property damage ultimately undermines the cause of the demonstrators.
justmotteingaround
2mo ago
I am optimistic, especially compared to what I gather is the median for themotte. I think institutional bias over fake racism claims is an issue, but Bayesian thinking leads me to think it cannot possibly be a primary concern (ie it cut the other direction for a long time so that is the initial given, and you update towards the current state with examples of it cutting the other direction. Sanity checking my guesswork seems to indicate that outcomes are in line with expectations, and have been for decades (given both the priors, and the explanatory assumptions of HBD). Each individual example of the current bias is infuriating, but I don't yet see dispassionate quantitative reasons to think it has large consequential effects (although I'm open to such reasons).
justmotteingaround
2mo ago
Would be a shame if we stopped using them because of incorrect beliefs about the root causes of group differences…
This is essentially what I am earnestly claiming, because I do see how we get back to equal protection without explicitly acknowledging point 1. The courts have been doing this since the 1970's, clarifying that disparate impacts are fine so long as a non-arbitrary business necessity can be demonstrated.
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
3mo ago
Write a post-dated check to an organization you loathe for a sum large enough to sting. Give that check to someone you trust. If you don't weight 'x' with 'y' bodyfat on Jan 1 2025, they mail the check. This is a semi famous commitment device. YMMV.
But when it comes to diet, its really up to you and your habits. There is no end to dieting until your habits keep you at a healthy weight. You might be tempted to crash diet at the end following the above, but its an interesting idea.
This conflates national and federal polities. And at the Federal level, you have the Koch and Federalist cartels to undermine the public for conservatives, balancing things out. The US is a divided nation, but its between 60/40 and 50/50. Nevertheless, what flies in California won't pass muster in Alabama.
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