tikimixologist
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User ID: 257
(1) Reading up on the intra-community accounts from a couple years back
I am aware of the occasional mentally unstable woman (e.g. Kathy Forth) making vague claims that plausibly mean very little. E.g. her only concrete claim is that someone touched her leg and her complaint about such resulted in his immediate expulsion. Keerthana Gopalakrishnan has similarly minor concrete claims (asked out 3x in a year) plus internal narratives ("felt unsafe").
I am not aware of anything that suggests rationalist communities have a problem worse than communities which are not considered problematic (e.g. cardiology, anti-moneylaundering, education, journalism). Perhaps if you want to make this claim you can provide evidence of it. The Time Magazine article and the various conclusions you drew (but which it did not actually say) are not such evidence.
By the same token, given the community norms, the weird/kinky/awkward/shy are encouraged to not be afraid and to let it all out. That then causes problems such as guy thinking "okay, we're friends, right? so it's perfectly normal for me to talk about jerking off in front of her" in relation to a woman who is not part of that particular community and does not know the norms.
No one claims this happened except you. Time Magazine does not. The guy who believes Time Magazine is referring to him says something entirely different happened. No one disputes him, and in the event of a dispute there is highly likely to be plenty of evidence.
I'll note you also claimed it happened during a job interview and he was her boss, which you seem to have retreated from. Why do you keep making claims such as these? Do you have some firsthand knowledge that the rest of us lack?
What did you mean when you said "I can believe it, because [insert rant about quokkas]"? I assumed it was referencing this which is entirely about my Claim 2 - that innocent rationalists will be harmed by evil and dangerous journalists/grifters/etc if they don't develop defense mechanisms. Did you mean something else?
tikimixologist
1yr ago
Everything that the doomers claim AI would do assumes a biological utility function, such as maximizing growth, reproduction, and fitness. It's very anthropomorphizing in the same way pop culture depictions of aliens just happen to be bipeds with two eyes and ears and a nose, and not a cloud of gas or whatever.
They do not assume this at all. You clearly haven't actually read about instrumental convergence which is a conclusion about how the world works and not an assumption.
But this goes contra to my understanding of what neural networks are, namely just function approximations by and large.
Did your understanding generate a track record of correct predictions about recent AI developments? The statement that "it's crazy that..." suggests you did not.
tikimixologist
1yr ago
If you want to claim that poor Americans and residents of Flint lack agency and cannot make good choices for themselves, then the natural question is why do we allow them the freedom to make choices?
My 2 year old daughter wants to watch TV and eat candy all day. But she is not competent to make that decision and has her freedom restricted.
Even a perfectly rational agent will notice that there are costs to finding a job and benefits to having one, and that if the costs or benefits change, the cost benefit analysis changes. A rational agent "choosing not to have a job" is making that choice in the context of the current market
Yes. It seems that for some folks, idleness (supplemented by wealth transfers) is more fun than work, and that's why we have poverty.
Which media do you believe is actually conveying this message?
tikimixologist
1yr ago
Yeah a fair bit is contingent on stuff like "how feasible was it for Lando to send a message to Han" and "exactly how bad is it all of Lando's people if he resists" - all of which is off screen. (Near as I can tell the answer to the latter is "very bad" given Lando's warning that everyone needs to GTFO.)
But given Lando's later actions (rescue Han/blow up the death star instead of running off and continuing his career as a con man), I'd suggest he's probably a decent enough guy who was put into a tough situation where all choices involve the Empire harming someone.
Even then though, a cracked bank account (via cracking.com) seems to be around $100, which is still much cheaper than $1500, so ..
These aren't cracked. They are empty accounts opened up in the identity of nonexistent or defunct people, typically with negligible history. (If you want an account with a few transactions, that's more expensive.) Best case, you're now verified for spamming as Herman Lopez, a 90 year old guy in Florida currently in assisted living.
(Folks in assisted living are generally the best fake identities; not on a "he's dead" list but also unlikely to notice.)
Anyway, you don't seem to disagree that the cost of spamming has gone up.
tikimixologist
1yr ago
If you think there's some silver bullet to 100% stop scams, and Musk's failure to find it means the effort is worthless, then you simply don't understand the problem.
The thing about fraud/scams is that the supply curve slopes downwards.
You also didn't even read what Musk wrote about $8/verified account, namely that the verification process still happens. It's not simply "send $8 worth of shitcoins for a bluecheck".
So ... in that sense, $8 is clearly a win for spammers! (the scammer probably pays less than the $1.5k upfront per account, if they even do at all vs hacking, so who knows how hard it is to actually get an account ofc).
So let me illustrate how you've clearly not thought this through. Here's a simple way Musk can use the $8 payment process to verify the account in a manner that is hard for hackers to exploit directly, and also incentivizes them to bother someone else: no CC, you pay via bank transfer authorized by Plaid.
Now in order to get a verified twitter, a scammer also needs to either a) hack plaid b) hack BofA/Chase/etc. In both cases, if successful, there are far more lucrative things the hacker can do with the hack than get a checkmark - transfer money directly from the victim, buy an XBox using Afterpay/Klarna/Affirm (set up auto repayment via bank transfer with plaid) then sell it on eBay, that kind of thing.
tikimixologist
1yr ago
Is someone really going to impersonate @joespizzastamfordct? Is that enough for joe to pay 100/month?
It's $8/month. And the answer is yes, that's pocket change for @marietherealtor - she regularly spends 10x that on things like donuts + paper fliers + balloons for an open house. It's quite cheap if you put it into the category of marketing/reputation spend.
Assuming the average person reading replies scrolls down a full screen, you need between 3 and 7 people who replied to ElonMusk/ye/etc to be verified and spam is pushed down.
But hey, probably you have a better grasp on stopping scams than Elon Musk (early Paypal) and David Sacks (early Paypal). At least one person in this conversation is also experienced in stopping organized crime from doing scams online (albeit not at the same scale) - is that person you?
Regular people don't have to spend $8/month for either of my mechanisms work.
The closest thing to "regular people" who get a bluecheck in my example is @joespizzastamfordct. Those sorts of people absolutely do pay for similar things on other social media: WhatsApp business accounts, linkedin pro, google map's "not the closest or best but they paid us so they get to the top" search results, yelp for business.
tikimixologist
1yr ago
You could cut police violence across the board by 7/8ths (imagine that), and there'd still be room for two George Floyds a month, whenever the media should desire another.
You'd mostly have more Ricardo Munoz or Makhia Bryant (see if youtube will show you the bodycam footage) type killings.
A third possibility you're ignoring: teaching students the mechanics of the test results in the test more accurately representing their knowledge. This is principal/agent alignment, insofar as accurate measurements indirectly provide value to the principals.
For example, reminding students daily to bring at least 3 #2 pencils and a sharpener on friday is more likely to result in an accurate score for students who would otherwise forget pencils. Teaching students to completely fill in bubbles avoids wrong scores for students who think they put a checkmark next to the right answer. Teaching students to guess if they can eliminate obviously wrong possibilities (d: Lincoln's cell phone wasn't charged) makes the test reflect partial knowledge (Lincoln didn't have a cell phone) more granularly.
So if you want to claim test prep isn't useful for the administration of a test, you need to exclude two possibilities:
a) it's teaching useful mechanics such as what I describe above that make test administration work better
b) it's teaching the actual boring material as opposed to fun stuff teachers enjoy more
All the test prep I've ever received or performed (I taught too) fell into one of these categories, and I've basically never even seen test prep that didn't.
Or alternately, you need to show that the amount of (a) which is done is in excess of what would be efficient in an ideal system. If that's the route you want to go, it is of course necessary to demonstrate how teachers with no data analysis skills (and usually no access to data) are somehow better at identifying this optimum than administrators.
But I'm hardly surprised that you refused to provide any specifics and instead just repeated the same meaningless talking points.
tikimixologist
1yr ago
I'm not sure why you find "lets help random terrorists/revolutionaries who oppose our regional (Saudi Arabia) and global rival (USA)" an implausible motivation for Iran's helping Al Quaeda.
Next up, why would a Democracy help Wahhabi Jihadis in Afghanistan (against the Soviet Union)? Why would a Woke nation help literal Nazis in Ukraine (against Russia)? Why would a Communist country help Nationalists in Puerto Rico or Ireland (against the USA)?
tikimixologist
1yr ago
Fixed, thank you.
tikimixologist
1yr ago
There is no clear theoretical way to "gradually" introduce it and dampen the blow, as any long term plan if factored into market price will bring long term land value down to nothing.
This claim is simply innumerate.
Value of property = \sum pow(1- interest rate, N) x (income in year N - LVT in year N). Here N = # of years.
So here's how you can dampen it:
-
Raise interest rates above 0. (They are currently 4% or so.)
-
Set the horizon for the LVT some time in the future, say 10 years.
The end.
Presto, the contribution of N=0..10 has not been reduced at all, and the cost of the LVT in year 10 has been dampened by 33% (1-4% interest rate ^ 10), year 11 by 36% (=(1-4%)^11), etc.
This calculation assumes the discount rate for real estate == interest rate. But that's a gross underestimate - when interest rates were essentially 0%, 4-5% cap rates were typical and that implies real estate's discount rate is typically interest rate + maybe 3-4%. At a discount rate of interest rate + 4% = 8% (today), that suggests dampening of year 10's income by 57% rather than 33%.
tikimixologist
1yr ago
That sounds deflationary.
How does land values failing to increase result in CPI (an index of how much it costs to buy food, oil, clothing, rent a flat, etc) decreasing?
If this were a real concern, why not just print more money?
tikimixologist
1yr ago
One doesn't need to be crazy to believe that some leftist journo guy is a sexual abuser, but that doesn't mean a crazy person can't have that as a crazy-induced/influenced belief. See, for example, Freddie's really bad craziness episode.
tikimixologist
1yr ago
I asked about emulating Shapiro's position while not emulating his style and the only way to do that is emulate his position while denigrating him.
Yes, in a conversation about a particular human, you need to express an opinion about that human. Yaying "yeah he's soooo smart did you see that youtube video where he proved Matt Yglesias is wrong" is not a panty peeler for liberal or conservative women.
I can defend a position that is likely aligned with him - in a humorous and trollish manner - without mentioning the specific person at all.
The bit about Pocahontas is riskier, and I'll give you more credit for that. If I was motivated to pick that apart too, I would say you seem to be capitalizing on "50 Stalins ambiguity."
...attack the excess of the Left, but not really from a Rightist perspective.
Stuff I do when I want to have sex: ambiguity, mystery, trollish playfulness.
Stuff I'd do when I want to masturbate and then cry myself to sleep out of loneliness: attack her opinions WITH FACTS AND LOGIC.
tikimixologist
1yr ago
You're not sharing sincere beliefs, you're telling jokes and dunking on people.
You seem to believe these can't be done simultaneously.
tikimixologist
1yr ago
Well to be fair I do think there is a cost disease in medicine and a pile of money. It's just that the pile of money consists of payment for actual medical treatments given to non-fraudulent people.
There's no shortage of evidence that marginal medical consumption doesn't improve health at all up to and including 3 RCTs (RAND, Oregon and Karnataka) and one national medical system designed to reduce this waste (Singapore). The basic idea is that if medicine has a low marginal cost, people consume more of it even if they don't need it. It makes them feel better but doesn't improve health.
In contrast, if you make them pay 70-90% of the cost (up to a high cap), they don't spend money unless they really need it.
tikimixologist
1yr ago
Fair point. But either way, the point is that there's no significant pile of "free money" in health care. All the money is going to hard working, nice, and generally sympathetic workers. Your choices are to either pay them less or fire some of them.
My impression is that a large component of cost disease is an oversized beurocracy: receptionists, lawyers, and people who deal with piles and piles and piles of paperwork and insurance companies.
This surely exists, but it's mostly actual health care workers: https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/forefront.20180502.984593/full/
And even out of the non-health care workers, quite a few - janitors and MRI repair guys - aren't the pile of free money that everyone wishes existed.
Stuff that isn't directly providing value to customers, didn't exist a hundred years ago,
Quite a bit of it goes to stuff that didn't exist a hundred years ago but is providing tremendous value to customers. An example from the article:
"I receive regular treatments for chronic allergies (I’m allergic to almost everything on the planet, and have been receiving recurring allergy treatments for several years in order to minimize my unpleasant allergic reactions)."
A hundred years ago he'd just suffer.
tikimixologist
1yr ago
Yes, the links I provided also explain that.
tikimixologist
1yr ago
People were buying a mix of 4 week t-bills and other short term debt in order to put their money to work. It was not always paying 4.5% interest though, a while back it was maybe 0.1-0.2% + protection against tail risks of your bank shutting down.
tikimixologist
1yr ago
If there are zero prominent black doctors, lawyers etc,
From what I can tell there are maybe 3 prominent doctors of any race: Fauci, Phil and Oz. In 2019 there were only 2.
Even if you include TV doctors played by actors in the list of "prominent", you get this:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/ac/GreysAnatomysSeason1Cast.jpg https://imgs.search.brave.com/hysRef-QN6BMM2eTEp8a6s-UR42RuFNs4yhGsO9lyXU/rs:fit:1200:798:1/g:ce/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cu/dHZpbnNpZGVyLmNv/bS93cC1jb250ZW50/L3VwbG9hZHMvMjAy/MS8wNC9lci1zZWFz/b24tNC1jYXN0LTE0/MjB4Nzk4LmpwZw https://imgs.search.brave.com/OLW5OIoYr8AmyV94xcc_5PDdTCn7cVPUTJCgLP31ZpQ/rs:fit:1200:1080:1/g:ce/aHR0cDovL3R2c2Vy/aWVzZmluYWxlLmNv/bS93cC1jb250ZW50/L3VwbG9hZHMvMjAx/Ni8wMy9zY3J1YnMu/anBn
Plenty of black people, but quite oddly not a single Desi. That's pretty different from literally every hospital I've ever been to in the US.
Yet in spite of about 0% of prominent doctors being Desi, and Desis being about 1.3% of America, they still make up 30% of doctors.
tikimixologist
1yr ago
This tweet thread explains it well: https://twitter.com/jonwu_/status/1634250754486857729
Highlights:
"Say you're a founder (or VC) with a bunch of illiquid but sure-to-be-worth-something-someday startup equity or fund carry, and you need a house.
Typical mortgage lenders won't help you.
But SVB will, at the same insanely good terms they're known for in the venture debt world."
One working parent in a family is for those who are wealthy enough to have the wife at home (or single-parent families where it's the mother working, or unemployed and on benefits). Expectations are built around couples where both are working and earning, if you want a mortgage or any kind of expense in living in today's society, there needs to be two wage-earners.
This is totally false in lots of places that aren't San Francisco. Prior to the COVID run-up in house prices, the average house price in Phoenix was about $275k. Residents of working age earn in the ballpark of $70k.
https://www.point2homes.com/US/Neighborhood/AZ/Maricopa-County-Demographics.html
https://www.redfin.com/city/14240/AZ/Phoenix/housing-market
Same is true in most of the fast growing cities.
I vaguely recall there was a much more detailed AAQC about this back on the subreddit.
Tech layoffs right now because companies need to trim the fat and get back to profitability? Unless you have a guaranteed job to walk into as a replacement, you better hope your significant other is working and covering the bills while you try and get another job.
Let me introduce you to the concept of saving money - something that was far more popular in the 1960's than today.
And if there is a constant rota of untrained staff who then leave after two years, how do you expect your hospitals to work? I feel you have not thought this through (or you imagine that nursing just means bedpans and changing sheets).
One plausible way that might work is a tiered system where the 2 year staff changes sheets/bedpans while the pros restrict their efforts to things that require skills that can't be quickly acquired.
I do not know what the breakdown of work is, but it seems quite plausible - thanks to the American guild system - that a lot of work currently requiring a registered nurse could be done by a far less skilled person. We have strong evidence that many such guild-based regulations are not medically necessary, as evidenced by the lack of deaths caused by state-to-state variation between them.
My mistake on whether the funds will be taken from workers or people who deposit money in banks that engage in prudent risk management.
But I guess going forward, there's no point bothering to put your deposits into the reliable banks.
Who owns these depositors, and has been furiously lobbying the government to protect their asset over the weekend?
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