magicalkittycat
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User ID: 3762
Anyone who is has the resources and know-how required to procure and operate an F-35 or Nuclear Weapon is going to be a lot more than just some "fringe whacko" in a compound somewhere.
You don't personally need the resources or know-how for most of this (besides operating but even that can be simplified by bad actors) so long as people can sell you or gift you one. Decentralized terrorist groups like 764 already grooms random local depressed nutjob kids to shoot up schools among many other types of crime, imagine what damage coordinated rival nations could deal if these nutjobs could have access to major weaponry.
And if we ban selling or gifting major weapons but not guns, then we have already established there is a distinction and they do not count as "arms" in the same way.
As I went over here https://www.themotte.org/post/3822/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/457705?context=8#context you personally can do most of the checking yourself.
Find you the John Alexander Adams (or whatever votes you think are suspicious), track them down and ask them if he voted. Maybe you stumble across some 85 year old with poor memory who says "what's that son? I boated? I can't remember" or a guy who got in a car accident after and died or someone who assumes you're up to no good and tells you to fuck off, or idk even just a guy who lies but you can even help solve for this base rate by gathering a base rate from other states that you don't think voter fraud occurs in. If the average is .5% and California has 2%, that's pretty good evidence of something going on. Although of course we can also just use our brains and ask how the fuck did the fraudsters predict who would get in a car crash or develop dementia and not even bother with most of it. Then the only problem is dealing with specifically with the base rates of idiots who forget they did vote and liars.
Is it a bunch of work? Sure. But people have done tons of work for way less important stuff. If it was truly believed to be a major avenue of fraud, "it's hard" is not an explanation. The explanation is that no one thinks it worth the effort, most likely because they don't think they'd get a result reasonably exposing fraud.
As far as I can tell having read California's laws, they do virtually no verification on any of this.
Any random Joe can do this, voter registration info is open to the public. I can look up anyone in my state and see if they're registered and what elections they voted in. The same is true of every other state as far as I can tell.
And thus if I wanted to, I could cross reference it with my own investigation into the person. Find someone with the name and birthdate.
For example I'll just look up a random person in NC. I found John Alexander Adams of Asheboro NC https://vt.ncsbe.gov/RegLkup/VoterInfo
He is a Republican who registered last year, (it seems he moved counties and registered in the new one) and his first election was the 2016 Republican primary in Montgomery county. I could, if I wanted to, find him. Having his registered address makes it easier, but it's not necessary. It's possible he's moved again since registering after all anyway. I have his name. Tracking him down might be a hassle if he has since moved multiple times or became homeless or something since, but it's possible if I truly thought he was a fake vote.
There's even a person who shares his name who lives in Fayetteville, so maybe that makes the search a little harder "I'm looking for John Alexander Adams?" "oh I know him!" and then it's the wrong one might end up happening. But still, I could find him if I wanted to.
That I don't want to suggests I don't really believe the vote is fake.
magicalkittycat
2hr ago
Yeah exactly, they're not motivated to vote on their own then they aren't motivated to help you coverup either. As this woman herself learned when the people she paid ratted her out.
Therefore any conspiracy alleged must be even larger than just "they paid a bunch of people to vote" or "they voted in your name when you didn't vote", it also has to explain why the homeless would be willing to cover it up too.
magicalkittycat
3hr ago
By other logistical measures and analysis.
We could say the same thing about the moon landing or 9/11 attacks. The US has engaged in multiple coverups before, so it's not impossible that those are fake. But just like how the moon landing requires a ton of people with little incentive to lie (or even counter incentive like rival nations) to all coordinate together on the coverup, a widespread voter fraud scheme like what is alleged requires a lot of people to help the coverup without the incentives or motivation to do it.
If the moon landing was fake, we need to explain why the USSR didn't call it out. If 9/11 was fake, then we need to explain why all the middle eastern countries didn't try to expose it. If there's a large mass of fake votes being done among registered homeless, we need to explain why these homeless are willing to engage in the coverup and lie and say they actually voted. The theory might still be true, but it must also be even grander than what is currently alleged.
What evidence we do have, a random woman trying to do a small scale plot, suggests that they are not willing to lie and will expose voter fraud.
There would be more cases like that of homeless people alleging they got paid to vote when questioned/testifying that they did not vote despite records showing they did.
Unless there's a reason to believe most homeless people are aligned enough to lie to coverup the voter fraud scheme but not aligned enough to just vote, we should expect attempted cases of fraud to be ratted out by them. Which is exactly what we saw when some random lady tried it for very very small fraction of homeless people. The types of people who you have to pay (or vote for secretly without them knowing) are specifically selected as people who don't care to help you hide.
magicalkittycat
5hr ago
If she doesn't get caught, there's no evidence of it ever happening.
Yes, because it's an easy thing to catch if it's happening for a number of factors.
If she gets caught, that's evidence of it not happening on a wider scale, because more people would be caught.
Someone who tried getting caught so easily is evidence of how easy it is to catch, even a very small scale attempt has the people she paid willing to rat her out.
The toupee fallacy is possible, like it is true about every alleged conspiracy and secret. A successfully pulled off fake moon landing would look like a real moon landing to my eyes.
But that's why just like the moon landing, we can look at other logistics and question how feasible the coverup would be. If the moon landing was fake, that's a lot of people who would need to be silent about it, many of them who have little incentive (or even an opposite incentive like rival countries) to keep it covered.
Likewise if there was a mass fake voter scheme, that requires a lot of people with little incentive to keep it covered up. In fact, many of them would have the opposite incentive and would like the attention and money they might get from exposing such schemes or even just because some of them are conservative (I find it unlikely every single homeless person is some hardcore lefty). So like with the fake moon landing, we need an explanation as to why the USSR doesn't call out the US/many of the homeless don't expose the fake voter scheme.
As we see just with this random woman and a very tiny amount of homeless people involved, they seem perfectly willing to talk. So we can't take "the homeless won't talk about it at all" as a baseline.
magicalkittycat
15hr ago
Just to throw in here, some random lady actually tried a scheme like this! And what happened? The homeless were willing to expose her plot. https://www.facebook.com/SpectrumNews1SoCal/videos/a-marina-del-rey-woman-paid-homeless-individuals-on-las-skid-row-to-register-to-/1835258350765981/
Pretty good evidence that if the supposed coverup would require a ton of homeless people to be silent or lie, it won't work. Random person with a very small number of people couldn't manage it, the amounts needed for the larger scale fraud alleged would be far more difficult.
It wasn't some youtuber, it was like a real old-fashioned TV news reporter -- I do think a lady got charged on that one, you could look it up? But I have no reason to think it was staged.
So I did look it up, and yes a woman named Brenda Lee Brown Armstrong plead guilty to it. There doesn't seem to be any proof of connections to higher level officials, she seems to have done it of her own volition and got caught. https://www.facebook.com/SpectrumNews1SoCal/videos/a-marina-del-rey-woman-paid-homeless-individuals-on-las-skid-row-to-register-to-/1835258350765981/
This combined with the recent Puerto Rico case serve as good evidence of how hard getting away with such a widespread conspiracy would be, the homeless people will not actually engage in a cover up as alleged. If there was widespread election fraud going on, then "just go and ask people if they actually voted" seems to be an effective strategy. Even just a random person attempting it with a very small segment of homeless people got it leaked.
Even a far simpler case like someone who tried to fake signatures for a petition got easily caught https://abc7news.com/post/exclusive-team-confronts-couple-paying-san-francisco-homeless-fake-signatures-petitions/18868695/ it's really hard to get away with such fraud for an extended period.
but I recently saw a reporter interviewing homeless people in LA saying that they were paid to fill out ballots for/against some ballot initiative --
If there is any teeth to it, why is it kept only at "interviewing" random people? Put together a list of names who are willing to officially testify. File lawsuits. Have professional journalists (the top news media corporation in the US is conservative aligned! They have talent who could do a proper investigation). It seems remarkable that apparently the amount people want to go in evidence for it is random ground interviews, something easily and commonly staged, and then everyone is apparently happy to stop there and be satisfied. If they're real, it should be easy to do more than some guy making a YouTube or Tiktok video or something!
And if there is something going on, it should be able to be traced to top level officials (if the accusations was that they were involved). When voter fraud schemes do occur, they're often from private individuals engaged in their own misbehavior. For example we actually know of a drugs for votes scheme in Puerto Rico and we have an idea who was involved. A violent gang had connections to the Republican candidate and independently engaged in a drugs for votes scheme to support her. She was not involved, they just did it because they stood to benefit from her winning.
They're vagrants. How would you find them in order to question them?
You have their name and other registration information and know what city they're in, that's more than enough for someone who wants to check to track basically anyone down. That this theory is specifically selected for people who use shelters too makes it way easier to find them as well. If people don't want to do the work of double checking, then it suggests that no one actually believes this is a method used in election fraud and thus not worth their time to investigate.
You show up to the address on their ballot to ask about them and the person there will just shrug and tell you they have no idea.
Just ask them if they voted. Sure some will tell you to fuck off because they assume you're up to something else like trying to solicit them or whatever, but if it was a widespread issue then you should be able to find a pretty sizeable verifiable number of people who are marked as having voted who will attest that they didn't actually vote.
magicalkittycat
19hr ago
How politically active do you really think the modal homeless person is?
According to your theory, they are politically active enough that they would help in an active cover up and pretend to have actually voted if questioned. And if they're that motivated to lie to people double checking, then it seems reasonable enough to assume they should be motivated to just vote to begin with.
And yet it fails the very next part
then you have to coordinate them to cover up that they didn't actually vote when people check,
A whole bunch of people saying they were signed up at the homeless shelters and that they didn't vote yet somehow votes were submitted in their name would be noticeable. And if these homeless people were willing to lie and say they actually did vote, then it would be easy to just get them to vote to begin with.
This also explains a great deal about how California can continue to spend billions of dollars on homelessness without actually achieving any sort of meaningful reduction in homelessness.
There's already an easy and known explanation for it, spending doesn't matter. Housing supply and demand matters and California is extremely NIMBY. It's why West Virginia has some of the worst drug rates but low homelessness. Homes are cheaper (because they have a much larger supply:demand ratio) so even most of the addicts can afford a place.
And that's just one logistical issue. The secret ballot doesn't mean there's no tracking of ballots sent out and returned at all. The record of who you voted for is unknown, but if you voted is public. So in order to generate a bunch of additional fake votes you have to figure out a bunch of registered nonvoters to pin it on or else you end up with a massive clump of votes received>voters who actually voted. But if you have a bunch of registered nonvoters to pin it on, then you have to coordinate them to cover up that they didn't actually vote when people check, in which case is it not easier to just have them vote if they're in on the conspiracy? So ok maybe you make up a bunch of fake people who can't expose they didn't really vote because they aren't real, but then the double check finds they aren't real so nothing has been fixed!
The easiest weak point I can think of would be in the counting process, just saying "yep this one for A is actually for B" but then you have to find a way to hide it from the other monitors and dispose of the real ballots without anyone noticing, because of course if you just mark it down wrong the double checks can find that too you have to replace real ballots with fake ones.
Election fraud can work out in countries that are already lying about all their other logistics and where no one really bothers to meaningfully contest the results anyway (since they all know it's rigged), but it's going to be way harder when numbers don't start to match and people are willing to challenge it in the US.
magicalkittycat
1d ago
The main political explanation people argue is that fucking with the federal reserve hurts the markets and if there's one thing they care about more than expanding the Trump executive, it's their finances.
I don't know if this is the correct explanation, but it's the main one I've seen.
magicalkittycat
3d ago
If it's "pretty clear" then why haven't charges been filed, an indictment secured and a guilty verdict found? It must not be that clear after all then. Even putting aside a guilty verdict, just an indictment alone is widely known to be a really low standard by itself, so why hasn't it happened?
Especially when we put it into the surrounding context that the Trump admin's standards against political opponents are so hilariously low that they'll even do blatantly bullshit charges like this. Therefore when casual allegations are made by the admin that don't result in any further action, we can reasonably assume they're so weak they don't even pass the nonsense "Comey threatened the president with seashells" level.
magicalkittycat
4d ago
There's not really much useful to actually be gleaned from native Americans regarding birthright citizenship cause they are a very weird and unique situation.
The Indian naturalization act was necessary because of previous decisions that treated the tribes as sovereign entities of their own. (see Cherokee Nation v Georgia and Worcester v Georgia). Due to this, they actually had a lot of powers that states didn't have like the ability to independently enter into treaties with other nations. So they couldn't be entitled to birthright citizenship because they in a weird legal sense were not considered to be in the US "properly", they were considered to be in the tribal land. Despite that about 60% of indians were already citizens anyway due to the Dawes act, having a citizen parent, treaty agreements (like the Choctaw tribe), and many other factors. And yes even now tribes still exist in a very strange legal status, as "domestic dependent nations". with their own sovereignty rights.
It does make for an interesting possibility depending on how the Indian Naturalization Act is worded. If it is particular enough, it might be possible for a non citizen to give birth on tribal land outside of proper US jurisdiction and therefore not get the kid birthright citizenship. I imagine it would be ruled as included now from the act but it would depend on the actual words there.
magicalkittycat
5d ago
Fine, this particular instantiation of word games was the final straw to a portion of the rationalist-adjacent crowd that had never bothered with Yud's masturbatory sequences, and proved that the considerations of the Bay Arean Social Influence were more important than anything a normal person would call rationalism or utilitarianism for the greatest good of the greatest number of people, and virtually stamped approval of utility monsters- so long as they are utility monsters approved by the Bay Arean Society.
This is still quite lacking. The only actual criticism is an underlying claim that effectively says "rationalism and rationalist communities like those under Yud are more concerned about social approval than reason."
This would be a fair criticism if shown, but it's not shown. It seems to me at least to be motivated primarily off your shock that Yud or Scott Alexander might disagree with you on something you personally consider simple, and instead of asking "could they actually have different perspectives?", you assume it must just be a bad faith appeal to the bay area zeitgeist.
Let's try again: redefining the categories of "man" and "woman" to be useless circular referents makes people less economically efficient and dismantles a functional society that broadly continues to find significant moral, ethical, and economic value in having some legal separation of the sexes.
Now this is an actual argument. It makes actual meat filled claims
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That categories are being poorly redefined in a purely circular manner
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That the redefinitions have observable economic impact.
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They also have observable moral and ethical impact.
Now ethical and moral questions are something hard for rationalism to really tackle because they're so subjective. After all, something like a Muslim claiming it is immoral to eat pigs is correct from their moral perspective. So those are just like, ok it's against your personal moral views. Fair enough.
But we can actually address the other ones, particularly if there is an observable economic impact here. We could look at more progressive countries and compare them to less progressive ones. Do countries that allow or condone transition tend to do better or worse than ones that don't? Or do US states that condone it do better than ones that don't? Or we could look at the before/after economic status of a country/state after a relevant law or ruling happened and see if anything changed. Or whatever other sorts of tests.
There may be some confounding factors here, but we can actually test it. I don't know if it's right or wrong, but you've made a real criticism at least.
Maybe the claim can still survive it, that's not an excuse. Scott has covered this exact sort of topic pretty recently and I think he highlights the problems with "well I still think it anyway so stop nitpicking" defense
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/if-its-worth-your-time-to-lie-its
If it's worth FTTG's and Wesley Yang's time to make claims based off piss poor criteria (and it seems people agree with me, even if they don't wish to admit it, that they are piss poor given no one here actually wants to give an affirmative defense for why trans awareness month should be included but black music month should not) then I'm going to point out that the criteria used is terrible.
Bad criteria like this from the left gets called out by multiple users here. Little reason for me to do the thing everyone else will do. Bad criteria like this from the right when called out gets "how dare you nitpick?" and endless meta complaints. Lots of reason to point out it's terrible then, very few others will. The reaction here is cringe behavior as Scott puts it.
I’m not saying you’re required to correct every little trivial falsehood. Nobody has time for that. But I think if you want to correct it, people don’t get to call you “cringe” or describe it as “well acktually”. What could be more cringe than telling small lies, then bullying anyone who tries to correct you, in the hopes that future audience will be too cowed to speak up?
you want to be reductive, sure. I don't like murder either, or green bell peppers.
I can give actual substanted reasons for why I don't like murder, like "having people live in fear of violence makes them less economically efficient" or "allowing murder dismantles a functional society" or even just the basic "I think murder is morally wrong".
What you provide here is just fluff. Pure ad hominem.
Scott's essay was silly, socially motivated, and shot a hole through the chest of Rationalism as being anything more than postmodern word games with a nerd's coat of hobby paint.
It's disguised in a wordy way to appear sophisticated, but there is nothing substantial said here.
That is what I call damning with faint praise.
But even with the fluff, it's still wrong. These "word games" have been a part of rationalism since at least the sequences, thus Scott playing word games couldn't have blown a hole open, if there is a hole it was already there. So even the fluff is wrong.
Just as the Motte is radical compared to wider society, you're radical compared to the Motte.
One important question, radical to who. The anti western democracy beliefs of a few users here is wildly radical even compared to some of the farthest right corners of mainstream Trump supporters (I live in a Trump >+20 county in NC, I've talked to plenty of normie republicans and I don't think any of them are as wildly anti western democracy as some of the posts here) but might look milquetoast in China or Russia.
My strong belief in free trade is the mainstream opinion of economists and one of the dominant beliefs of the Republican party for like >50 years, and yet when put up to the current ruling politicians as a gauge, I am now radical because the winds have shifted with our pro tariff president. Or actually, I would have been except tariffs are one of Trump's least popular policies and most Americans still seem to be rather pro free trade. So which belief is radical there? Depends on who we use as a baseline, the current president or the American people?
The point FtttG is making overall is, I think, correct, in that it's a bit rich to accuse conservatives of politicising the transgender issue or drawing attention to it. "You brought it up!" is the correct response for conservatives to make, perhaps with a side order of, "If it's so trivial and unimportant, why don't you just give in?"
The conclusion could be overall correct, I didn't comment on that. I specifically went for the clearly bad logic regarding calender days, because that is clearly bad logic.
The criteria chosen for which days or months get included is terrible. It was terrible enough that if it wasn't for "the writer was just being too lazy or stupid to consider if there was other observed days for African Americans that meet the level we use for trans related ones" being a valid explanation, I would assume it was in purposeful bad faith.
The meta complaints about me are really interesting like that. Does someone really lack such self awareness that they don't recognize themotte, a pretty radical spinoff of an already pretty out there and eccentric group (rationalists) would be made up of a bunch of people with wildly different views from general society?
Well yeah probably, this place is bound to be autism central, such deficiency is expected to some degree. But it's like that meme of "autistic person meeting someone else slightly more autistic", like woah.
But I also think such meta complaints are used to mask a lack of meaningful response to the actual comment.
Is there a good criteria in which something like Black Music Month, which has a wikipedia page and congressional approval should not be counted as observed when comparing African American related holidays to trans holidays, but under which trans awareness month should be? Perhaps, I can't think of any but there might be I suppose.
There's been no answer regarding the actual meat of my argument there. Maybe he has an answer and just won't give it, maybe he has a convincing criteria that blows mine out of the water. Where was it?
This behavior is not uncommon for the site. For example consider this discussion where instead of providing any evidentiary meat to chew on to back up the claims that police had charged a protestor for assault when they were just defending themselves (like a Fox News article about it, or the charging documents, or something other than "random x user says so"), commentors get into a meta discussion. Where is it? Where's the meat? No one wants to provide any.
I even said this in a comment then
How about instead of having a meta conversation, we have the actual conversation where someone finally provides semi decent evidence for their claims a guy was charged for bruising and officers fists while blocking beyond "guy on X said so".
It all seems like a way to dodge that maybe said evidence might not actually exist. I couldn't find any! You double checked and didn't find it. So where is it?
Of the 10 people who saw this and down voted, none of them had any interest in providing actual evidence for the claims presented. Same with the original comment asking for any actual piece of evidence, no one seemed to think that providing proof was a reasonable part of discussion?
It's all meta hate, no substance.
magicalkittycat
6d ago
It doesn't matter anyway. I never said no one has ever talked about it or mentioned it. I said that it's not observed in any meaningful way. A single acknowledgement from the San Francisco government about it is not a meaningful observation.
From pretty much any meaningful criteria, black music month is far more observed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_Music_Appreciation_Month
It was initiated as Black Music Month by President Jimmy Carter, who, on June 7, 1979, decreed that June would be the month of Black music.[1] After the announcement by Carter, the bill finally passed in 2000 when activist Dyana Williams' 10 years of effort persuaded Congress
This is officially recognized by Congress and created by a then sitting president. Any criteria that includes "trans awareness month" and not Black Music Month is stupid. Like this doesn't even have room for smart debate, it is the most official one by far. And black music month is still at the bottom of the barrel barely scraping by "meaningful observation".
Diplomats could be married to US citizens, or possibly be a US citizen themselves. Apparently there's been quite a few Canadian diplomats who are also American. There's also one of an American ambassador to France who had French citizenship through their marriage.
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