tikimixologist
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User ID: 257
tikimixologist
1yr ago
I think today more Republicans (e.g. DeSantis, Ted Cruz with a beard) would. But would Romney, McCain clean shaven Ted Cruz have done so in a pre-Trump world? Far from clear to me.
My point is that the Soviet Union (a communist, and therefore anti-nationalist) country supported the IRA. It wasn't because they agreed with Irish nationalism, it was because causing trouble for Britain was fun and in their interest. Same reason Iran might help AQ or other Sunni militant groups whose primary focus is on overthrowing MBS.
tikimixologist
1yr ago
I can tell you the answer - it's fine, for some women. If you're in a culture where it's not "I am gay" but "I sometimes have sex with men" (they exist today!) you probably also have more traditional and non-western views. Marriage isn't just a matter of romance, there's also a significant element of family unification and being part of a social structure.
Some women want mostly the latter and don't care much if their husband sucks dick once in a while if he treats them right and fathers children. With some luck, these women's parents will set them up with a guy who is known to be a bit odd but otherwise a decent fellow. Parents are quite practical when finding their children a spouse.
tikimixologist
1yr ago
I think most women who went through modern western sex-ed would have that concern, particularly if that sex-ed didn't obfuscate the fact that gay men are a cesspool of venereal disease. That's far from universal in the kind of places I'm talking about.
Also, venereal disease transmitted by gay men is not necessarily a major risk in a place like Bangladesh (not that there are any good statistics on it). If there's no grindr and you only manage to escape nosy relatives for gay sex a few times a year, there's no reason that gay men would have the astronomically high HIV rates that they do in the US.
tikimixologist
1yr ago
I just tried to find this debate on youtube to understand what you're talking about. Searche queries like "fetterman oz debate unedited" find me nothing but short clips chosen by the mainstream media.
Plausibly, some people voting for Fetterman might just be completely unaware of what you saw. I'm not completely sure - I couldn't confirm it, though I certainly see the signs of youtube trying to make it impossible for me to do so.
tikimixologist
1yr ago
There have been similar protests that included a small amount of illegal behavior every time a Republican has been elected president since 2000.
https://wgntv.com/news/hundreds-of-peaceful-trump-protests-overshadowed-by-violent-acts-arrests/
Some of these anti-Republican protests were even organized by foreign powers: https://thehill.com/policy/technology/358025-thousands-attended-protest-organized-by-russians-on-facebook/
Did those people not, in some way, think their actions might lead to Trump being deposed? Their explicit statements to the media suggest they too were engaging in a coup attempt:
“Trump is illegal,” she said. “He is in violation of the constitution. I am doing everything I can to prevent his presidency.”
tikimixologist
1yr ago
I guess you didn't read my links carefully. The specific quote I provided of a woman trying to prevent his presidency was from an inauguration day protest (i.e. before Trump assumed the presidency) at literally the location where he would be inaugurated. Violent actions - e.g. setting a car on fire - also happened. So by your stated criteria, it was a coup attempt.
But I guess you can gerrymander your definitions even more carefully now that I've pointed this out.
The protests against Bush in 2000 and 2004 were also pre-inauguration, and were generally aimed at influencing the vote counting process.
it was literally a protest in the sense that nothing they could do at this point could make Trump a not-President and they were just expressing their frustration.
You seem to be claiming that because anti-Trump protesters (including violent ones) had no hope at achieving their stated goal of preventing him from becoming president, they are "just expressing their frustration". But when anti-Biden protesters (mostly peaceful) engaged in protest but had no hope of stopping Biden, it's a coup attempt. Weird.
tikimixologist
1yr ago
Is "lets take selfies while illegally wandering around and vandalize Pelosi's desk" based on a plausible model of how an election could be overturned?
From what I can recall the goal was to persuade Pence to do some maneuver of questionable legality, much like the protest attempts directed at vote counters/courts in 2000 and 2004. But those weren't coup attempts.
Anyway glad to know that the crux of the issue is how hopeful the mostly peaceful rioters feel.
P.S. There were literal death threats directed at members of the electoral college, also in an attempt to stop Trump. No arrests for that "coup attempt" that I can find either.
tikimixologist
1yr ago
Cost to launch a payload into space:
Space shuttle (USA): $54k/kg
Ariane 5 (Eurozone): $9.1k/kg
Proton (Russian): $4.3k/kg
Falcon 9 (Musk): $2.7k/kg.
Falcon Heavy (Musk): $1.4k/kg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_launch_market_competition
What a fraud. He definitely lacks the ability to execute.
Or are you suggesting that most proponents of blank slatism vs HBD are not arguing as a result of an innate desire to see people justly compensation for their work?
I would make this argument.
Here's a trope of environmentalist interventions. There's a hypothesis that some part of a selection process is preventing people from being justly compensated for their work. Then we directly fix that process by modifying it so that bias can't enter, and it has no effect or even makes the gaps bigger. The blank slatists then get angry and, if it turns out bias went the opposite way, advocate against fixing it.
Examples:
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Gender blind hiring in Australia is scrapped after it turns out people were biased in favor of women rather than against.
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Similar results in tech, and now gender blind hiring is out of favor. Ideology tests during the interview are popular, however.
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SAT was originally meant to (and did!) nullify the bias inherent in high school grades. What if teachers were biased against lower classes, colored people, Jews, etc? They might give lower subjective grades and the SAT could find hidden talent. It worked great, but the hidden talent is predominantly Asian so now they want to scrap it.
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Leftists oppose civil service tests of by the book firefighting skills, because blacks don't pass them. Instead they favor an oral exam where bias could creep in. ("By the book" means "according to the firefighter manual, which saw blade should be used to cut concrete". To be fair, the test in New Haven was badly copied from the NYC test and included a few questions about NYC geography which I guess is racist and invalidates the test somehow?)
There are a huge number of cases where leftists directly oppose changes that result in people being more justly compensated when that results in selecting fewer members of their favored groups. I can't think of any cases where they support it. Can you?
tikimixologist
1yr ago
From a career perspective I also doubt it's good to be a face on a monitor to bosses and coworkers, especially if you're entry level like I am.
I think it depends on whether the company is full remote. At my company there's a new guy I'm familiar with. I have no idea where he live. His manager is in Montana, the other senior guy on his team is in New Orleans, and at most they all met each other once at the offsite. (Probably in 2023 there won't be a $3-5k/person offsite due to cost cutting.) I can't see how it's hurting him.
I suspect it would be different if his manager and half his team were in NYC, while he was just a face on the monitor from wherever. Highly recommend against that if you're entry level.
tikimixologist
1yr ago
As of Oct 28, he had explicitly not done so: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1586149451348910081
tikimixologist
1yr ago
Yes, in nearly all cases, including basically 100% of cases where the request is made to a specific corporation.
The main case where they might not be is if the request is so diffuse that the government has no power against folks who ignore it. E.g., I can see Bush's post 9/11 requests that the American people be nice to Muslims as not being coercive.
tikimixologist
1yr ago
Work rules are, quite explicitly, something that does not improve business. It makes businesses less able to engage in process improvements, particularly since any process improvement becomes a new opportunity for employees to grab more without adding value.
Work rules are generally more harmful than just demands for more money due to this deadweight loss. As an example of this, consider port of LA workers opposing any kind of productivity increasing automation under the guise of work rules.
tikimixologist
1yr ago
Supposedly German unions use apprenticeship systems and generally produce a minimum level of quality.
That purported role is frequently filled by occupational licensing and unreasonable education requirements in the US (e.g. college degrees for daycare) which serve the same "protect our jobs from competition/give us more money" role that unions do.
Because network effects are so strong in the social media space, I'd imagine FB/Instagram/TikTok
FB is trying to pivot away from news/politics and TikTok never got into the game to begin with. Sure, there's a few dumb teachers tiktoking their groomer fantasies, but libsoftiktok has to put in work to find them. If you're a casual user of tiktok you see attractive ladies doing stuff while being attractive and cute pets doing stuff while being cute. Maybe once in a while a bit of novelty like a fat person with a nice face who is really good at dancing or a really ugly dog whose owner loves them anyway :heartwarming music:.
The business case for big platforms getting into political ads is actually quite bad. A quick google search suggests that all political ads in the US, across all platforms, is $13B. That's less than half of Amazon's ad revenue and a single digit portion of Google's. The downside is a massive amount of political risk. Why take that risk for a few percentage points more revenue? Zuck certainly doesn't want to.
https://www.statista.com/topics/4942/political-advertising-in-the-us/#dossierKeyfigures https://www.statista.com/statistics/271258/facebooks-advertising-revenue-worldwide/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/266249/advertising-revenue-of-google/ https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/03/amazon-has-a-31-billion-a-year-advertising-business.html
tikimixologist
1yr ago
In other countries doctors have done much worse at creating labor cartels; the UK is flooded with a continuous supply of doctors from Southern Europe, Africa, India and so on, which is why salaries for doctors are 1/4 or less of what they are in the US.
See also discussions about how medical costs in the US are unreasonably high, and we should reduce them to UK levels. That can only be done by reducing employee compensation to UK levels.
tikimixologist
1yr ago
First, it is well established that managers of companies do not always act in the best interests of the companies themselves.
Very true. For example, managers are well known to keep workers who should be fired - either to maintain their "empire" or just because it's socially uncomfortable to fire people they've formed relationships with.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/real-dev.stlouisfed.org/wp/2005/2005-040.pdf https://www.nber.org/papers/w3556 https://pure.eur.nl/en/publications/cultural-influences-on-employee-termination-decisions-firing-the-
Similarly, managers - as employees themselves - are incentivized to minimize accountability and maximize their own compensation.
How do unions counteract this, in either the general case or even in specific cases like education?
were able to push back on all sorts of proposals by administrators which we disliked and rationalized as being unlikely to inure to the benefit of students (newsflash: teachers know more about their students than administrators do).
Fixed that for you. Sure is convenient that teaching methods teachers find boring (phonics, direct instruction) are bad for students and all the studies showing otherwise are wrong.
“For seven years in a row, Oakland was the fastest-gaining urban district in California for reading,” recalls Weaver. “And we hated it.”
The teachers felt like curriculum robots—and pushed back. “This seems dehumanizing, this is colonizing, this is the man telling us what to do,” says Weaver, describing their response to the approach. “So we fought tooth and nail as a teacher group to throw that out.” It was replaced in 2015 by a curriculum that emphasized rich literary experiences.
https://time.com/6205084/phonics-science-of-reading-teachers/
But employees should also get some way to push back against being asked to wear diapers at work.
They do. It's called McDonald's, Walmart, or any other non-Amazon job which - according to /u/limestheif - pay more than the competition in return for demanding more from workers. This isn't some kind of monopsony-ish situation where only one employer in the state needs their specialized skillset.
You seem to want to eliminate the opportunity to work harder and get more money for those that want it, I guess cause you know better than they do or something.
(I'm ignoring the fact that the diaper story is mostly FUD based on exaggerations/universalization about a problem that happens to many older adults.)
As it happens, I liked the administrators in question. THAT"S THE POINT: The nature of any organization is that agents, such as school administrators, often are incentivized to act in a manner not conducive to the mission of the organization,
Here's the most I can make out of your reasoning:
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Agents don't necessarily act in the best interest of the principal.
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...
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A second set of agents will somehow fix or improve things.
Can you fill in (2)? The closest you come is "teachers know more about their students than administrators do", but you now seem to be backing away from this claim.
If you're not claiming the second set of agents is somehow better aligned with principals, what are you claiming? Or maybe you aren't claiming (3) at all?
such as pressure to teach how to game standardized tests, and pressure to rubber stamp principals' funding priorities.
Ok. I'll bite.
Teaching the mechanics of testing along with techniques for ballparking and figuring out certain answers are definitely wrong is not an unreasonable demand. I know there's a claim that "teaching to the test" somehow involves techniques that don't convey the material, but in the rare occasions someone has shown me what it actually involves it's mostly teaching the actual curriculum instead of whatever the teacher feels like.
If you want to argue this claim of mine, a great way to do so would be to a real high stakes standardized test from CA or NY and explain the mechanics of getting students to do well on this test without also learning the material well. A bad way would be saying the words "teaching to the test" or "game the test" with no specifics.
Teachers have no demonstrated ability to be administrators or competent stewards of funds, so I don't know why I should care what they think about funding priorities.
I discussed #2 at some length.
No, you mentioned things teachers unions do. You did not explain how they improve decision making or benefit students in aggregate. If you're merely claiming that in at least one case they do (but might be negative value in aggregate), I don't disagree with that claim.
Yes, teaching how to game the test is not utterly devoid of value. But that is a red herring. The issue is whether teaching that, in lieu of teaching substantive material
If what you describe actually exists and takes a non-trivial amount of time, that would be bad. Can you please explain how to actually do this for a real standardized test in one of the 10 largest US states which was given in the last 10 years? I claim that it's not possible, except for some very trivial stuff that doesn't take much time such as "if you can rule out 2 choices out of 4, select one of the remainder at random."
I've had people tell me a few theories about how this might happen when I press the issue, but on the rare occasion they don't refuse to be specific, googling actual standardized tests suggests that their theories are impossible. Would you care to provide mechanics, as well as a link to the specific standardized test on which you think it works?
tikimixologist
1yr ago
In the teachers union example, the principal is students. Agent 1 and 2 are school administrators and teachers unions, respectively.
In the case of private sector employment, the principals are shareholders and customers, whereas agent 1 and 2 are managerial employees and ICs (possibly with the latter represented by a union).
I guess you're thinking that students can learn to read via phonics by somehow playing teachers unions against school administrators (or having their parents do so)?
tikimixologist
1yr ago
Principals, whose jobs depend on how students perform on state tests, have an incentive...[to do things that]...I never claimed...worked.
I'm pretty confused here. Principals push you to do things that don't improve performance on tests because...they are incentivized to improve performance on tests?
On the flip side:
I don't have all the details on what was in the proposed curriculum because I threw it away.
we also have teachers refusing to teach the curriculum they are assigned.
It is in the interests of students that a teacher need not fear being fired for focusing instead on the analysis standards.
At least it is if you assume some random teacher knows better about what students should learn than the semi-democratically chosen school officials who created the curriculum and decided what was important enough to be on the tests.
tikimixologist
1yr ago
The thing about fraud/scams is that the supply curve slopes downwards. When you put in hoops to jump through you raise the cost of doing fraud as well as the cost of being a real person just trying to do their thing. The name of the game is to raise the cost for scammers by a lot, but for real people by only a little.
Right now, the cost of doing fraud/scams is mostly being good at selenium scripting through a botnet (cheap). An $8 charge passing through the ordinary financial system is a lot harder to do. Certainly far from impossible, but the set of people who can both do selenium scripting through a botnet and pass fake charges through the financial system is much smaller - the net result is we get less of it.
Here's a short list of people who I can say with 100% certainty know and have deeply internalized this fact: Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Max Levchin, David Sacks, Reid Hoffman, all of whom got very rich by doing a good job putting this principle into practice.
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)?
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