ulyssessword
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User ID: 308
ulyssessword
1mo ago
From your second link:
A typical validation of the Stefan-Boltzmann’s law of radiation : is done by measuring the radiation from a filament of the incandescent lamp. The filament is enclosed in a vacuum.
A typical demonstration of radiative heat transfer is done in a vacuum, but that isn't a real requirement. You can instead compare the total heat transfer from a hot black plate (emissivity near 1) to the heat transfer from a hot silver plate (emissivity near 0). The black plate will have faster heat transfer despite being surrounded by the same air because it radiates more.
I'd like to see his calculations for "...the conductive and convective effects at the surface are vastly greater than the radiation; by about 240 times."
Venus has a very high albedo. Most sunlight is actually reflected away from the planet. Venus actually gets less net sunlight than earth! GHGE says Venus, without a greenhouse gas effect, should be cooler than earth!
No!!
Even if you assume the emissivity of the object (such as Venus) can be fully described in a single number (i.e. it is an ideal gray body), you're only describing the gross rate of radiative heat transfer. Any ideal gray body that was protected from conduction/convection would reach the same equilibrium temperature given the same surroundings; a high-emissivity one would absorb a lot of energy which is coming in and emit just as much, while a low-emissivity one would absorb a tiny bit of energy and emit just as little.
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Simplify taxes: both in the real sense (fewer rules), and in the paperwork requirements. Personal income taxes are automatically filed, sales taxes are included in the prices, etc.
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Public access to public research: Any publicly-funded scientific study or similar report cannot be paywalled. If any organization puts a paywalled copy of it in an (otherwise) easily-visible place, they will face a fine.
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Browser-based privacy preferences: Users can configure their browser to always accept, refuse-if-possible, or warn-or-block different types of cookies from websites. Websites are forbidden from displaying a cookie/privacy popup if the browser is configured properly.
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Unsubscribe by right: If you put in a reasonable effort to unsubscribe from a service, then you have unsubscribed. If the company tries to charge you an ongoing fee after you have unsubscribed, your bank will automatically block that fee (with a message) if you have informed the bank of your actions. Any further attempts to charge the former customer will be tried as fraud, and ignorance is not a defense after that one warning.
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Brands are linked to traits: Pyrex would be required to make borosilicate glass bakeware (not soda-lime glass), WD-40 would be linked to its 65% volatile organic compound formulation (not 25%), etc. If they want to sell new products, they will need a new name.
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(EDIT: New) Actually support the cause: If you want to display support for a cause, then you have to actually tangibly support that cause. A $100 donation will buy you the right to a bumper sticker, $500 will allow an emoticon in your username. Hashtags are merely topics and therefore unrestricted, but (non-)supporters will be noted with a parenthetical tag in their posts.
ulyssessword
1mo ago
Sorry, let me retry.
A law can be Anti-X and highlighting that fact can still be farcical.
As one hypothetical, imagine that there was an activist that promoted the right to bear arms and self defense. If he started pushing for the rights of prisoners to carry concealed weapons (prison is one of the most dangerous places, after all), then I'd call it farcical.
I wouldn't bother mentioning that the law prohibiting prisoner concealed carry is (by a strict definition) anti-self-defense, even though it is.
ulyssessword
1mo ago
"A law that restricts X group isn't anti-X...
As far as I can tell, that was brought into the conversation by guesswho. A law can be both anti-X and farcical. For example, promoting the right to self defense by giving those most likely to face violence (prisoners) the right to defend themselves (by carrying guns in prisons) is a terrible idea, and I'd have no problem laughing it out of the room.
ulyssessword
1mo ago
A law can be both farcical and Anti-X.
As one hypothetical, imagine that there was an activist that promoted the right to bear arms and self defense. If he started pushing for the rights of prisoners to carry concealed weapons (prison is one of the most dangerous places, after all), then I'd call it farcical.
I wouldn't bother mentioning that my opposition is (by a strict definition) anti-self-defense. If anyone (accurately!) defended it on those grounds, then they're farcical too.
ulyssessword
1mo ago
Or else maybe I'm confused because it makes no sense to have a check and balance during an arrest.
Sorry, that's my mistake. TIL that "checks and balances" is a very specific term of art that only applies to the government. I meant something like "Establish critical control point monitoring requirements" or "quality assurance via preventive actions".
We don't accept someone's word that food isn't contaminated or that a part is manufactured correctly. We have implemented recordkeeping and inspection requirements ("checks" on the procedure) that provide sufficient safety without compromising productivity ("balances" between those goals...oops).
You can't go "Trust me, bro. This food is good." because we value the safety that those procedures bring. Meanwhile cops are like "Trust me, bro. It was a good raid." and we just collectively shrug our shoulders and move on. Maybe he's right, maybe he's wrong, but we don't care enough about (future) raids to make it easy to answer.
Huh? The decision to shoot taken at the time was either reasonable (the officer had an objective and well-founded need for lethal self defense or defense of other innocent life) or not.
The uncertainty is the problem. I don't just want it to be a good decision based on the facts, I want it to clearly be a good decision based on the available evidence (or alternatively clearly be a bad decision that's guaranteed to lead to punishment). I can't tell if it was a good decision or not, and nobody else can either.
I don't think that the officer's behaviour in the weeks leading up to the raids was objectionable in either case (or at least I'm not objecting to it). It's just what happened in the time between showing up at the street and knocking on/down the door that's at issue.
So in this case, what kind of shoot was it?
We don't know and the government feels no need to inform us. If there was exculpatory bodycam footage I'm guessing we would see it, but they don't have enough foresight to gather that evidence.
The thread that links ___'s case to mine is that the officers feel no need to be accountable for their actions. Malinowski's shooters didn't feel the need to defend their (upcoming) actions, and Parks' invaders weren't required to confirm that the address was correct. Ranking the credibility of different decision making styles:
- Mathematically proven to logical certainty.
- Scientifically or legally proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
- Reached through proper
checks and balancesauditable controls in a verifiable way. - A reasonable decision made by a competent person following their training/expertise.
- A decision considering the relevant factors.
- A decision that isn't based off of illegal or malicious factors (e.g. racism, price fixing).
- A decision.
I'm pushing for the police to meet standard #3 whenever practical. Regardless of whether Malinowski was a shot well or not, the decision is not verifiable. The warrant is largely verifiable, and we can debate as to whether it's good or not, but apparently they don't care as much about proving that the shot was good. Maybe the officer could meet standard #4, maybe #7. Who knows.
Lt. Mike Lewis was held to standard #6 in his wrong-house raid.
ulyssessword
1mo ago
Are we gonna get body-cam footage and be able to come to an independent judgment on the conduct of the government in the course of the raid?
I doubt it.
I wish that we held public servants (particularly ones authorized to use deadly force) to a "duty to proactively gather proof of innocence". That way, if an officer couldn't decisively clear his own name then he would be at risk of being fired, even if the evidence that exists is too weak for criminal charges.
Instead, they get cover for bad decisions, like in this case (paraphrased and dramatized):
- Officer: After checking the details, I proceeded with the raid.
- Judge: You checked the details and confirmed that they were correct right? Actually never mind, you get qualified immunity regardless. You checked, after all.
To be clear: no one is banning tiktok. They may force ByteDance to divest from the American form of tiktok. ByteDance can then sell it to non-Chinese owners. Or take their ball and go home. Their choice.
I generally agree with people that describe "Do X, or else we'll do Y" as "plans/threats to do Y". In this case, I have zero problem describing "divest from the app, or else it will be banned" as "...planning to ban tiktok".
It would be like arguing "the mobster isn't threatening to break your kneecaps. You can pay back your debts, or else... It's entirely your choice."
ulyssessword
1mo ago
where I expected it would.
That post (?) is hidden behind registration, but I found their logo funny nonetheless.
ulyssessword
2mo ago
See also: Lockdown: The Coming War on General Purpose Computing, a 2012 speech/blog post by Cory Doctorow. It's outdated by now, but this has been going on for a long time.
ulyssessword
2mo ago
The fact the spaces needed is so close a match for those provided is a near miracle of demand prediction.
If this article is representative, then 6-8 spaces in one subdivision of Dublin is about a 20% shortfall. I'd struggle to call that "good", nevermind a "near miracle".
You talking about genetic material being different between different populations and sub-populations doesn't mean that race is not socially constructed.
Of course it is, just like everything else. The mere fact that a category is socially constructed is utterly unremarkable. If you want to build policies from that, then you need a stronger grounding. Is it arbitrarily socially constructed, and therefore easy to change? Are there unprincipled exceptions in the social construction, that should be rectified? Is it too complex (or variable across regions and cultures) so it can't be used to communicate clearly? If you could argue that something is a bad social construction, then I'd listen to your ideas about what a good one is.
It seems we agree that social construction of race is not useless nor does it mean that there are differences between groups of people?
It has uses (I'll leave whether it's net useful unanswered), and the causation flows the other way: genetic differences caused racial classification, the classification didn't affect the genes.
A black man and a white man has more similarities in genes, just different expressions of phenotypes, which often is what is used to classify race to begin with.
What is "more" referring to?
If it's a comparison of the average black+white vs. white+white, then I'd say it's plainly incorrect.
My understanding is also that differences within one race are higher than between.
Thanks for the link. It's an interesting find, but the comparison is nigh-meaningless and shouldn't drive your decisions.
Using that same within/between comparison can lead you wildly astray: The income differences within genders are higher than between, but the wage/earnings gap is still a live issue. The life expectancy differences within countries are higher than between, but it's still used as a key indicator of progress. The temperature changes within a year are higher than between, but climate change is still concerning.
Comparing the variance between different individual things to the variance between different large aggregates will practically always say that the individuals are more distinct.
African populations have more genetic diversity within different sub-populations as an example.
That's a neat bit of trivia, but not remarkable either. Sticking with the color example, there's more diversity in wavelengths in "Red" (130 nm) than in "Green", "Yellow", and "Orange" combined (125 nm). Groups aren't always the same size, so "African" being more diverse than "European" and "Asian" combined isn't (wouldn't be?) notable.
EDIT to add: Yes, the category is socially constructed, and yes, the tea has quantum mechanical effects inside your body.
ulyssessword
2mo ago
...the conflation that social construct means it doesn't exist.
That's a very common conflation in my experience, which makes it a valid target for counterarguments.
The socially constructed definition of race includes genetic information, which means that it is a physically-grounded system instead of an arbitrary one. This puts limits on how much society can change the definitions without going off the rails.
Though I understand you are just using an example, it's not a very good one since genetic differences between races aren't always clear.
First, differences between colors aren't clear either. Light with uniformly-random wavelengths is widely agreed to be "white". What about light with 1/3 each 450 nm, 550 nm, 650 nm? It might appear identical or different depending on the situation, so we've created the color rendering index to deal with that. What about fluorescent objects? They reflect visible light in a way that's easily-describable using standard terms, but they also create some extra by converting UV light. Category differences not being clear is completely normal, and there's nothing special about genetics in that sense.
Second, it doesn't look that bad? Look at the graphs Scott included just above your quote: they sure look like clusters to me, and the line-drawing isn't too egregious. Also remember that we're looking at a 2D projection of an N-dimensional analysis, so some more differences will show up in the later principal components.
I am pretty sure ethnic differences are larger within one race than between different races.
I've heard that statement before, but I still haven't got a good explanation of what the factual claim is supposed to be. My attempts all end up in nonsense.
My first thought was "a random pair of coethnics is more genetically different than a random pair of non-coethnics humans", which seems trivially false. My second was "a random pair of coethnics is more genetically different than a random pair of archetypal members of each race", which seems like a category error for the comparison and also plausibly false (see the graph again: races have size 0.2ish, while the distances between their centers are 0.35ish).
What do you mean in a hard statistical sense by that statement?
ulyssessword
2mo ago
I am generally a fan of strict and exact legal definitions of identity X, if X is supposed to give you considerable legal privileges and perks.
I bet you that this 2018 story gets your goat:
With the new birth certificate in hand, he changed his driver's licence and insurance policy.
All to save about $91 a month.
"I'm a man, 100 per cent. Legally, I'm a woman," he said.
"I did it for cheaper car insurance."
ulyssessword
2mo ago
Do you also dispute the wavelength basis of color? It fits in perfectly:
gardenofobjections seems to not understand. Color is still a social construct. There are wavelength variations among different colors, but this doesn't mean the categories of color are not socially constructed. Who decided we are going to define one color white and another black, based on photons? He (doesn't) uses the example with Hanunoo, but this makes no sense since their categorization of color is different from the Western categorization. These color categories have a purpose and are useful for a variety of reasons, but he's not making a convincing point that color categories are not socially defined. Certain color categories are fuzzier and an American invention: whites and blacks.
Put plainly, everything is a fuzzy socially-defined category, even the categories used in the hardest of hard physics. Bringing up this argument for genetics only is an isolated demand for rigor.
ulyssessword
2mo ago
You're probably right, but I think it depends on how difficult it is for the user. If swapping AI assistants is as difficult to do as installing VLC player or LibreOffice, then it'll lose out on a substantial chunk of its potential market. If it's as difficult as switching from Google Search to DuckDuckGo, then...it'll still lose out on some potential market, but not as much.
ulyssessword
2mo ago
You can run Stable Diffusion for AI-generated images on your own computer, so I don't think running a local AI assistant is too far out of the picture. Once AI proliferation reaches the point where hobbyists can create decent models, it wouldn't be hard to "...completely ignore any and all people talking about AI alignment, AI safety, DEI and so on."
ulyssessword
2mo ago
No, you tell me.
As-is, you might as well be asking me to define iouyqrwe while also basing your arguments on it.
ulyssessword
2mo ago
Am I? Are they?
Yes, unless I'm severely misreading your tone. Even your own beliefs about HBD are "paying rent" in the Yudkowskian sense: You anticipate that adopting it would have a specific utilitarian effect.
even if HBD is true (and that is an "if") what value does "HBD Awareness" add over a colorblind meritocracy in terms of anticipated experiences?
That's a category error. HBD is a set of beliefs. Colorblind meritocracy is a set of policies.
A person that believed in blank-slatism would anticipate that a (true) colorblind meritocracy would provide demographically-equal outcomes, and might (or might not) promote those policies depending on how it lines up with their values. A person that believed in HBD would anticipate that a (true) colorblind meritocracy would provide demographically-unequal outcomes, and might (or might not) promote those policies depending on how it lines up with their values.
ulyssessword
2mo ago
an "HBD aware" set
What is that set of policies? My first thought was colorblind meritocracy, but that's obviously not what you're referring to.
ulyssessword
2mo ago
One of the less stupid notions to come out of LessWrong was the idea of making one's beliefs "pay rent"
Link.
Note that it's pay rent in anticipated experiences. Not pay rent in popular political slogans. Not pay rent with gains in social status. Not pay rent with any utilitarian benefit. You seem to be using that term exactly the opposite way of Yudkowski, as HBDers have no problem linking those beliefs to anticipated outcomes.
New update of my occasional quest to make fandom.com usable:
(ping @netstack for a continuation of here)
- Removed the useless title block at the top of each screen (more room for content)
- The top navigation bar is always visible, restoring all of the functions of the previous point while also removing the annoying pop-in
Mostly fixed an error that made the page too wide, adding a superfluous scroll bar. It can still appear on narrower screens (including my vertical monitor).EDIT: Fully fixed 2024-03-03. The two new lines of filters at the end do it. I also readjusted the width a bit.- Updated to remove the sidebar they added back in under a new name
Gallery comparing my custom blocklist, uBlock Origin defaults, and no blocking (Note that no blocking also has an autoplaying video just below the visible part, which pops to the side and follows you down the page)
Also note that the page size shrinks from 35MB (and counting. It continually streams more.) when unblocked to about 1.3 MB with my filters in place.
My filters:
fandom.com##.notifications-placeholder
fandom.com##.wds-global-footer
fandom.com##.pathfinder-wrapper
fandom.com##.page__right-rail
fandom.com##.is-loading.top-leaderboard.ad-slot-placeholder
fandom.com###WikiaBar
fandom.com###mixed-content-footer
fandom.com##.global-navigation
fandom.com##.global-footer
fandom.com##.page-side-tools__wrapper
fandom.com##.global-navigation__top
fandom.com##.page-footer
fandom.com#$#.resizable-container{width:100% !important;}
fandom.com#$#.resizable-container{max-width:1800px !important;}
fandom.com#$#.main-container{margin-left:0px !important;}
fandom.com#$#.main-container{width:100% !important;}
fandom.com##.global-explore-navigation
fandom.com##.global-registration-buttons
fandom.com#$#.fandom-sticky-header{top:0px !important;}
fandom.com#$#.fandom-sticky-header.is-visible{transform:None !important;}
fandom.com##.fandom-community-header
fandom.com#$#.community-header-wrapper{height:46px !important}
fandom.com##.left.side-bt-container
fandom.com##.right.side-bt-container
ulyssessword
2mo ago
What is the most fun outlandish one that's still remotely plausible?
Hal Finley is the Bruce Kent to Satoshi's Masculine Mongoose. He's the subject of (and a willing participant in) an elaborate frame-job that links him to Satoshi, which provides investigators a convenient excuse to stop looking.
You expect ProPublica to do a good job of analysis? They're the ones that broke my faith in in-depth journalism with this article. I'd recommend reading it yourself to see if you can find their trick.
Spoilers:The tool works perfectly. 25% of "risk 1" and 80% of "Risk 10" offenders go on to reoffend, regardless of race. They then calculated "Of the [Race] criminals, X% of the [non-|re-]offenders were labelled [high|low] risk" to obscure that fact. I went into it more here, on the old site.
They certainly know how to tell a compelling story, but that's all it is: a story.
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