justmotteingaround
No bio...
User ID: 2002
justmotteingaround
2mo ago
Drug deaths and related "deaths of despair" have been wildly underappreciated for at least a decade. They tend to kill prime age people, and for reference they dwarf US annual losses in Vietnam (the worst year -1968 - was about 17,000; average over 20 years was about 3,000).
Preventable drug deaths have been compounding YoY since at least 1998, when there were about 11,000 "preventable" deaths. About 80% of deaths are due to opiates. Max statewide variation is almost 10X, with Nebraska, South Dakota, Iowa, Texas near the bottom (approx 14 deaths/100k), and West Virginia, Tennessee, Louisiana, Kentucky at the top (about 60 deaths/100k). Cali, NY, Washington, Oregon are middling (about 27 deaths/100k). Large clusters are found in the rust and coal belt. Unsurprisingly, "manufacturing job loss predicts a substantial share of drug and opioid overdose deaths for women and men" (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7725949/).
Opioids probably are fantastic
In my experience, there is a threshold for enjoyment depending on the person. I simply didn't find opiates all that interesting (prescription, tincture, inhaled), even at highly inebriating levels. Nevertheless, vs other drugs, the likelihood for life-deranging enjoyment is probably unmatched.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/drug_poisoning_mortality/drug_poisoning.htm
justmotteingaround
2mo ago
I think he is correct. I find HBD plausible in principle, but it's terrible political tool in practice. For one, its radioactive and attracts a high proportion of radioactive supporters. Second, many better tools already exist (standardized tests, colorblind policy, merit based immigration vetting). HBD is a worse substitute than existing policy frameworks. It purports to partially explain a wide variety of complex human behavior of ill defined groups. Interesting in principle; a bad policy tool for a nation that focuses so much on the individual (culturally and legally).
justmotteingaround
2mo ago
It is a defense to disparate impact along protected class lines if it can be shown that the discriminatory factor is a business necessity. I'm less confident in how this plays out in practiced, how many bullshit claims of prevailed since the CRA, and how much bullshit claims have trailed off since.
justmotteingaround
2mo ago
I really like Glenn and John but was shocked at their rapid credulity over a partisan documentary. TFOM is important, but my default is skepticism and alarm bells started ringing when (iirc) the doc started impugning a defense attorney for based praise of his (criminal underworld) clients. Also, as a viewer, I had to pause the sections covering the MRT manual and speculate why Chauvin allegedly/technically didn't use it. I guess I've come to expect to good faith steelmanning.
With high confidence, Chauvin meaningfully contributed to Floyd's death.
I'm camped in this epistemic ground but with low confidence because I see plenty of space for reasonable doubt (ie an unhealthy 47 y/o male with heart problems and plenty of drugs on board dying of a heart attack while stressed and recovering form covid is a reasonable explanation), and/or I think it's arguable that Chauvins actions were reasonable enough given the situation.
justmotteingaround
2mo ago
whether this was a fair ruling
Thats why I'm here, comments or links to well digested think pieces. I'd love to see the steelman of both sides. Ditto the Carroll case. Yet as someone who loathes Trump, I'm skeptical of both decisions after some light perusing of partisan hacks.
justmotteingaround
3mo ago
The analogy doesn't fit the premise, so the conclusion is... not even wrong??
Germany is a board of landlords who - rightly or wrongly - signed various contracts (citizenship, residency, asylum). So tough titties to them. They have to live up to the responsibilities they signed up for. If someone can convince the majority of the board to void certain contracts and "evict" people, then they'd run afoul of their responsibilities to various human rights charters aimed at preventing exactly this kind of "eviction". They're free to do that too, as far as I'm concerned, but "landlords remorse" doesn't make comparisons to other dubious evictions unreasonable.
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
3mo ago
Well, its sounds like a fairly normal story about burgeoning young(ish) love, which tends to arouse strong emotions. But for the sake of all that is good, somebody needs to point out that you painted a textbook picture of insecurity. This is not a pointed insult, but something you need to face head on. I suspect avoiding this label is part of why it lingers because "general thoughts of inadequacy that make me want to receive constant reassurance that I'm the best she's ever had" is practically the definition of insecurity. But at the end of the day... so what? So you feel insecure that you might not be the best lay your girlfriend ever had, and something about this causes you distress. This is not uncommon, but it is no reason to even entertain the idea of ending an intimate relationship with another human being. It is clearly not a 'her' problem. So maybe you are or maybe you aren't; maybe you will be or maybe you will never be the best sex she's ever had. Date her long enough, love her, and make her feel loved, and you probably will be, but that's besides the point. This is not important in the vast majority of long term relationships. As for solutions, the wisdom that comes with age will eventually dissolve your current concerns, but don't let that stop you from getting wiser faster than the rest. Self therapy, google, and philosophy can certainly help. Best of luck.
justmotteingaround
8mo ago
Forget the name but there’s a book about one of the guys who ran Xerox PARC
Fun note: I've read a few popular books on the history of science which tell stories about places like PARC, Bell Labs, GE, and IBM funding pure research in the ~40-60's. Iirc companies got leaner, financialed, government funding expanded dramatically, more people went into academia, bureaucracy expanded at all levels etc. Walter Isaacsons recent "CRISPR" book talked about research labs spending weeks filling out 100 page forms for government approval/grants for some projects (possibly the recent mRNA vaccines). Lots of factors at play. It all sounds sad, but I can only hope its somehow closer to optimal.
justmotteingaround
6mo ago
many people in our modern world are big proponents of sub-Dunbar level thinking?
For the same reason humans have most of our cognitive blind spots: humans brains spent 99%+ evolving in Dubar-sized environment. Dub Dunbar level thinking is the cognitive status quo. What is amazing is that we have built systems and institutions that - far more often than not - don't employ disastrous rent control policies.
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
7mo ago
One swallow doesn't make a summer. One paper (by a non expert) doesn't invalidate an entire field of experts.
we should restructure all of society based on these projections is yet another outlandish claim (with a side-helping of massive conflicts of interests)
I think looking at proposed answers to climate change is what turns evaluating the climate change hypothesis form a reasoning exercise into an emotional/political endeavour - and it cuts both ways. This is the only way I can explain all the special pleading for climate change as uniquely suspect for decades, despite being a bland, intuitive hypothesis. I think it's helpful set aside looking at proposed answers before thinking about the hypothesis.
I think Global Warming/Climate Change/etc... is nonsense
We should expect some kind of climate change a-priori. Anything else is nonsense. We've known CO2 is a greenhouse gas since 1859. Very basic. We've known the atmosphere:earth is roughly proportional to apple:apple-skin for a fair bit too. I'd be shocked if adding ~1 quintillion Kg's of CO2 to the atmosphere had precisely no effects. Measuring CO2 in ppm is trivial. Measuring temperature is trivial. Even if climate change isn't human caused, it'd still be worth investigating so we can engineer around it.
That we have the tools to model the Earth's climate at all is (imo) an outlandish claim
This is also a dubious line of thinking (its something like the appeal to ridicule). Chess computers, controlled flight, weather prediction, gene editing, nuclear fission, were all once claimed to be too outlandish to be possible. They still feel outlandish, but all can be done by hobbyists.
justmotteingaround
3mo ago
Small note on happiness surveys. I do they they can be useful in principle. I couldn't get the archived WaPo article to load so I found a 2017 longitudinal Gallup article, with some more granular data.
TLDR: since 1950 roughly 94% of of Americans said they were "very" or "fairly" happy. There was a slump and rebound centered around 1990 +/- 4 years. The final gradual slide to began around 2007, sinking to the 2019 all time low of 86%.
2007/08 seem to be where the interesting things began. People didn't get unhappy everywhere. Basically, post 2007 non-whites became far less happy (-13), HS or lower education (-10), and Democrats/Independents (-6).
justmotteingaround
2mo ago
While I think your initiative is extremely laudable, just know that the path ahead of you is fraught. You may have a serious medical issue which forums could exacerbate. But keep documenting things, trying new things, and taking the initiative. I'd recommend a heavy bias towards experts who can see you in person, even if you have to shop around for the ones that work for you. Cautionary note: cascades of care, and incidentalomas.
Lastly, this reads like you're looking for a simple fix that has a clear mechanistic explanation. Generally speaking, I would not expect such specificity, but keep trying to make things better.
So, here is a layman speculation (without knowing your age, weight:height, mood, stability, aerobic capacity etc).
sorta-permanent emotional numbness and pleasure deficiency.
This sounds like anhedonia. It could be hormones (testosterone, free-T, T:E ratio, various thyroid hormones, medications you are taking, cortisol, micro or macro nutrient deficiency). These can all be looked at in one blood panel. I'd start with a full workup from a GP. (and the results will give us amateurs more to (possibly dangerously) speculate about!)
It may be a neurotransmitter imbalance. This can be an appealing thought, as it seems to promise a clear mechanistic solution. IME, it isn't nearly so cut and dry. If you can get through your day without chaos, I'd investigate this last.
For now:
Consider cutting caffeine. It isolates one variable and should improve sleep. I won't sugar coat this, this is awful for a week or two. However, you'll get back good data quickly. Sleep is a miracle drug.
Consider following a balanced diet of whole foods with a tiny caloric surplus. Whole foods and sufficient calories are the goal.
Supplements: vit-D+k, zinc, and magnesium are the most common deficiencies. Might want to wait until after the blood panel. Creatine 5g per day because almost no harm, many potential benefits. L-citrulline (malate is fine). May improve blood flow at 10g per day. Glycine for sleep. NAC works for some to clear brain fog. Can also allegedly cause anhedonia (did neither for me). Prob some others but the supplement world is waaaay overhyped imo.
One-crazy-thing: Carnivore diet. Never tried it. Seems insane. The good: It's simple (but not easy) to adhere to. It's an elimination diet so fewer variables. Its radically not the same, perhaps resulting in different outcomes. Wide anecdotal support. The bad: most support is anecdotal. Its wild. Diarrhea for a week.
Again: have a bias towards experts in person, but keep the initiative. Its your life you're free to experiment and deviate. Best of luck.
justmotteingaround
6mo ago
She's the mirror image of an ideal Republican candidate. Imagine 'Wayne Johnson' from Appalachia, graduate of UWV, who worked his way up at Koch Industries in Texas. Having done a decade of group organizing for gun rights, Johnson was elected President of a major Republican PAC in Nebraska, and is now being appointed as interim Senator from Texas. Makes sense.
Butler is 45, from a poor Mississippi town of 1,800 residents (currently). She graduated college and worked he way up to a solid position at AirBNB, having long taken leadership positions in union organizing, and is now President of a major PAC.
The only cynical thing I see is that skin color was mandatory for the latter candidate.
justmotteingaround
2mo ago
After I lift I'm always hungry for a smoothie: 2 scoops whey, 300g frozen fruit, 300ml soymilk, 200g topfen (aka quark, its like yoghurt but even higher proportion of protein). That alone is 80g protein, and its delicious. Im 100kgs, and my appetite is stronger than I'd like, so this only fills me up a little.
For the always preferable whole foods, I know how to make a chicken breast I really like (carbon-steel pan, spice rub, 10 mins a side with light browning (gotta know your stove for this one), rest for 5. Comes out juicy, tender, delicious. For grilling I might flay them, but I usually marinade, and always rest).
Usually 2 breasts come in a 550g package. Eating one of these in a sitting is easy for me. The rest of the plate might be some kind of veggie, a scoop of hummus, possibly potatoes. 80g protein.
For prepared stuff, lately I've been making a semi-asian minced meat, minimal-oil grain and fry medley. Saute 2kg semi-minced chicken breast (its a lot of knife work) in batches with salt/spices, sautee 2kg various chopped veggies in batches (peppers, spring onions, zucchini, etc) with salt/spices, combine in a large bowl with 500g barley (done in stock), 200g can lentils, rinsed). Put in glass containers in the fridge. This makes about 8-10 bowls. 80g protein each. Season with a touch of roasted sesame oil and soy sauce after reheating. I like mine spicy.
Split pea soup with a very lean cut of pork. 50g per bowl. Freezes well.
Pasta "bolognese" with an absurd over-abundance of lean ground beef (anchovies in the sauce really enhances flavor, but not so much I can taste the anchovies as anchovies). I buy handmade pasta/ ravioli because I'm already skimping of flavor by not using veal, but honestly it's delicious once you get the sauce right. 50-60g per bowl; sauces freezes well. The right chili recipe is a protein bomb as well.
Salads with lean cuts of meat. Easy to hit 50g per salad.
I'm always hungry. I love food. I like to cook, but it doesn't take me too much time because after years of learning, I can solve my own personal prep, cook, clean, scale, taste, and macro equation without any overhead in term of thought. Most of what I eat is "leftovers", and I look forward to all of it.
justmotteingaround
6mo ago
This is fallacious thinking. Anyone can kill for any ideal, so admiration for the willingness to go that far is a dubious reason to care about such a person or what they wrote. Imagine someone who wrote about and then killed for the preference for waffles over pancakes. Sure, they had the courage of they convictions - which might be inherently admirable to a degree - but its not a good reason to care about them, what they wrote, or their ideas. Jihadists routinely kill for their ideals, and they're full of bunk.
justmotteingaround
8mo ago
I think the CW blowback will be in line with what you'd expect from decades ago: a career deranging storm lasting a year or so, echoing forever. He is a much less sympathetic case than Charles Murray, who can actually stand by what he wrote. According to Hannia, he wrote some vile and idiotic stuff up until his mid twenties because he was somewhat of a sexless, friendless, loser writing anonymously. He disavows what he wrote. His past motivations were to score political points - not to think things through - leading to a bunch of hairbrained "modest proposals". He explained all this, his journey to where he is today, and his motivations to prevent people from descending into the kind of unreason which captured his mind well into adulthood.
On the one hand, I can believe he is now writing honestly, and I see him as a valuable insider. On the other hand, I can see how people would be reasonably skeptical. I mean, he sincerely argued for the forced sterilization of ~80M Americans, an idea which doesn't portend a great thinker. To me, the sheer idiocy of his former ideas makes me believe him today.
I think his September book release will be heavily impacted and probably outright cancelled, although I don't know much about publishing. This would be a shame, although understandable from the POV of the principle actors. It's been blurbed by people with solid reputations who probably want nothing to do with the guy anymore. Its being published by Broadside Books, an imprint of HarperCollins, who are likewise going to want to distance themselves.
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
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
9mo ago
First, how could they forget about Waylon Smithers; a man who thinks women and seamen don't mix. Second, the claim that cartoons influences sexual orientation is extraordinary. I'm skeptical. I had heterosexual romantic feelings and sexual fantasies as a 3rd grader. Is it because I internalized the "strike hard, strike first, no mercy" ethos of Kobra Kai? I have my doubts. Third, exactly how much health has been lost, on net, by gay cartoons? Its extraordinary to claim that "million of kids would have led otherwise healthy lives" if not for gay or effeminate cartoon characters. Lastly, where are the parents? I was a horny bastard as a teen. Thankfully, I had good parents, good role models, and health class. If horny gays had the same upbringing, what is the quantifiable additional risk, and most importantly, how much of that is due cartoon characters?
How many boys, bombarded with the images of Tinky Winky and other non-masculine characters on a daily basis, either adopted a gay lifestyle or began to see nothing wrong with the lifestyle?
My honest guess is that almost nobody was turned gay by cartoons. Whatever LGBTQ craziness is going on in the culture and in peoples lives, I think there are other well documented, more data driven explanations.
justmotteingaround
8mo ago
IQ is no better or worse.
I would argue IQ is better as it substantially correlates to job performance in high, medium, and low complexity jobs. All else being equal, companies want a higher IQ programmers, mechanics, and window washers). Perhaps IQ is bet thought of as latent merit.
justmotteingaround
8mo ago
I'm okay with any politician being thrown in jail for a decade for merely doing what Trump did on his call with Raffensperger.
Have they confirmed she is stepping down?
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