ulyssessword
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User ID: 308
ulyssessword
1yr ago
Should Nature endorse political candidates? Yes — when the occasion demands it:
This week, Nature Human Behaviour publishes a study suggesting that Nature’s 2020 endorsement led many supporters of now former president Donald Trump to lose trust in science and in Nature as a source of evidence-based knowledge.
[...]
Participants who were Trump supporters did not view the summary favourably and, compared with Trump supporters who had been shown text on a different topic, had a lower opinion of Nature as an informed and impartial source on science-related issues facing society.
The growth of activism in ostensibly-neutral organizations is old news, particularly since this event took place three years ago. What stuck out to me is that they seem surprised by those findings, and have to reach for esoteric explanations like the "rebound effect". The simple explanation works just fine, and Bret Devereaux put it best: "Public engagement is how you build support for the field; activism is how you spend support for the field. Yet the two are often conflated; spending is not saving.".
Also notable is the primacy of feels over reals: Nature literally is not impartial, and Trump supporters correctly identified that fact based on the evidence they were presented. They didn't even pretend to grapple with the base reality: Instead of looking at trustworthiness, they look at feelings of trust. More broadly, instead of looking at personal finance, researchers and reporters look at feelings of stability and instead of looking at crime, they look at fear of crime.
ulyssessword
9mo ago
If there are a negligible number of them, then what do you gain by locking them out?
"Sorry Bobby, we want a racially-pure program, so we won't help you" doesn't fly with me even if it's only targeting one student.
ulyssessword
7mo ago
That doesn't answer the core contradiction. Why is sexual assault the only topic that "victim blaming" is used for?
Over the years, my local police (and a few nearby and/or related organizations) have put out information on protecting yourself from break-and enter, carjacking, bike theft, scams, mugging, and incidental gang violence. None (or at most a few) of those were paired with substantive actions, and none drew serious accusations of victim blaming.
Given that the organizations in charge of societal-level policy proposals (or implementations) routinely give individual-level advice with negligible pushback, what makes sexual assault so special?
ulyssessword
11mo ago
"Nowadays, I do most of my programming using an extremely-high-level language known as 'Undergrad'"
- Some computer science professor, when asked about how he creates programs.
ulyssessword
6mo ago
I can't wait for another judge to rule that an inkjet printer isn't a press, therefore (many) newspapers aren't covered under the First Amendment. Or that we aren't currently in a "time of peace", therefore the Third Amendment isn't in effect. Or maybe we can keep violating the Eighth Amendment until those punishments aren't "unusual" anymore, then they would be retroactively permitted.
This is somewhat tangential to the culture war, but WD-40 will soon be banned in Canada, despite what the headline of the linked article says.
At issue is a 2021 piece of legislation that comes into force on January 1, 2024. It limits the amount of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) in many products, setting the limit for "multi-purpose lubricants that are not solid or semi-solid" to 25% (Listed in Schedule 1, Item 26(i)). Needless to say, this is much lower than the 65% VOC concentration listed on WD-40's MSDS pages (website link) for the classic product.
WD-40 Company responded to talk of the ban by evoking the spectre of Fake News, and didn't mention how they would comply with the regulations. I've sent them a message asking if the MSDS info will be valid into 2024 (because I don't trust journalists, particularly when they can't find the "VOC" entry in a table and don't understand that "low vapor pressure" means less volatile.), and I strongly suspect that it will be reformulated by replacing at least 40.1% of WD-40's composition with substantially different chemicals. EDIT: They've answered, and it will be reformulated.
This ties into the same issues as @some's top-level comment on food names: I don't think that breaded tofu is "Chicken" (or even "Chikn"), and I don't think that a >40% new lubricant is "WD-40".
See also: PYREX vs. pyrex
ulyssessword
1yr ago
Not OP (and neither as quick or as sure), but I had a similar reaction from reading his work. It's mostly just a feeling, and "Mormon fiction" forms its own particular sub-sub-genre. It I had to guess what tipped me off, I'd say:
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PG13-esque writing: Violence is mostly constrained to battles, unprovoked assault is rare and shocking, and torture/abuse only exists offscreen. Sex is only between married couples, and barely even implied.
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Noble nobility: The nobles (or equivalent) are better in some way, and they have the genuine desire to help the people they rule over. See Dalinar, Wax, Elend, both the prince and the priest from Elantris, and one guy from Warbreaker.
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When the previous principles are broken (which is fairly often), it's only by bad people doing bad things.
ulyssessword
1yr ago
Are you completely certain that the government was doing most of the work of locking people down?
Yes.
If I want to visit a friend/business and they don't want me there, then that's fine. You can set whatever standards you want for yourself, and I'll accept them even if I don't agree.
If I want to visit a friend/business and the government threatens to imprison or fine me for it, then it's a lockdown.
How do you ensure that a piece of information is simultaneously public and secret? I have no idea, but I hope that someone can explain a reliable strategy because this story makes no sense in its absence.
EDIT: link to the policy in question.
TL;DR: The government of Saskatchewan just enacted a new policy that affects "preferred names" and pronouns for younger students (along with some other changes, which I'll skip over). It requires that teachers obtain parental consent before using new names/pronouns for students under 16 years old. The criticism is focused on two claims: First, being "out" is important. Second, it can be unsafe if a parent learns that their child is transgender.
The first claim has already been argued to death, and there's nothing new in this story.
The second claim is just bizarre in this context. What do they expect would happen in the absence of the new policy? Everybody starts using the child's new names/pronouns in everything from casual conversations to official reports...and the parents don't notice for >2 years?
If I knew that a child had information that could be dangerous if it got into the wrong hands, I wouldn't encourage them to spread it far and wide. In fact, I'd direct them to a professional that would help them to develop a strategy that minimized the damage from its release, or else cope with maintaining the burden of secrecy.
But maybe I'm missing something, so I'll repeat my question: how do you ensure that a piece of information is simultaneously public and secret?
ulyssessword
4mo ago
Am I missing a potential steel man here,
If you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas. All of the franchises share a reputation for taste, service, cleanliness, etc, and they also share a reputation for supporting political groups. Don't like being lumped in with activist franchises? Get the HQ to cancel their agreement and maintain stricter message discipline.
ulyssessword
7mo ago
ulyssessword
9mo ago
Not directly, but it has provided the foundation for some changes.
The most notable change came about in the wake of the Rittenhouse shootings. From reading the Culture War thread(s), he was very clearly acting in self defense. In the months that followed, his opposition completely ignored everything inconvenient and spouted braindead takes that went against easily-accessible evidence. If they had done half as much research as I did, they would easily see their own mistakes. Therefore, either A) they saw the mistakes, but made the erroneous statements regardless, or B) they didn't do the research. From that, I formed the hypothesis that they simply don't care about truth and facts.
Welcome to Conflict Theory.
ulyssessword
1mo ago
It's not the 9th circuit (and it's not even the US), but if you go just a bit north then using hard drugs in a playground is not illegal.
The Restricting Public Consumption of Illegal Substances Act was passed by the legislature in November, allowing fines and imprisonment for people who refuse to comply with police orders not to consume drugs in certain public places.
The nurses association argued the act, which has yet to come into effect, would violate the Canadian Charter in various ways if enforced.
ulyssessword
5mo ago
The most charitable explanation is carelessness.
The second most charitable explanation is selective carelessness. If you compare your conclusions to your worldview as a sanity check, then you would only notice the politically-inconvenient errors.
Also, I guess it's time to post Pro Publica's Machine Bias again, since we're on the topic of misleading statistics (though I don't think they made any factual errors).
ulyssessword
1d ago
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:
They certainly know how to tell a compelling story, but that's all it is: a story.
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
5mo ago
That said, it's not hard to imagine an explanation like "fantasy world genetics are different from real world genetics" or something along those lines.
You could, but that gets awfully hard to justify when the main character uses his knowledge of Mendelian genetics to discover infidelity. "Children consistently inherit hair color from their parents, but skin tone is pseudo-random" would require a lot of epicycles, and I don't think they even had one.
In fact, the support for piecemeal race-swapping I've seen has actively avoided in-world justifications, and boils down to "because it's [current year]" when it isn't "because fuck you, bigot".
ulyssessword
1yr ago
What's the point of living in a city if I can't go places in it?
Currently, I have (theoretically) easy access to a few thousand businesses and a couple hundred thousand individuals. "Traffic Filters" would cut those numbers drastically, so I might as well leave and go live in the country.
As concrete examples, that implementation of traffic filters would've prevented me from:
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working in construction, as the jobsites were too scattered for me to live near all of them
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Comparison shopping for major purchases
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Visiting specialty stores
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helping a friend move
It's like they thought "We need better public transit and more attractive local neighborhoods" but set the baseline comparison to better than driving and more attractive than distant ones instead of comparing to the current situation. Under that framing, you can achieve your goals by making everything else worse. (Heck, you can even achieve that goal while making public transit and local neighborhoods worse, so long as you disproportionately affect driving and distant neighborhoods.)
ulyssessword
1yr ago
In the earlier years of his presidency he couldn't even build a wall, so I never thought he could build a dynasty.
He didn't seize the reins of power when people were begging him to do it in the COVID era, which laid my remaining doubts to rest.
ulyssessword
6mo ago
"I never really thought that I would see and have confirmed pictures of terrorists beheading children," he said.
The White House later clarified his claims by saying neither the president nor US officials had seen pictures or independently confirmed the alleged atrocities
Are they trying to pull a Mitch Hedberg? That's one of the weakest "clarifications" I've seen recently.
ulyssessword
6mo ago
...a similar capture by the right wing, I haven’t seen a good answer.
That's just not who they are.
You might as well ask "why doesn't the Right train union reps, journalists, and teachers to rebalance the Culture War?" The right-wing leadership would love if that happened, but the candidates are too busy being truckers, miners, and chemists to bother.
Despite the name, the right and left aren't perfect mirror images of each other. Something that works for one side doesn't necessarily work for the other even in a level playing field.
ulyssessword
1yr ago
I don't like this. I don't like that money donated towards one cause -- supporting the development of a good piece of software -- is being redirected towards causes that are totally unrelated, solely because they developers care about those causes.
There was a slatestarcodex(?) article about two models of donations (unfortunately, I've lost the link). In the first model, you are giving to a specific cause, and trust the organization to advance it. In the second model, you are giving to agents that are aligned with your goals, and you trust them to make good decisions.
When a specific organization changes focus from [the cause they gathered donations for] to [the new cause], it's completely unremarkable to the second group of donors.
ulyssessword
1yr ago
Please note that Kanye is using double-spaces instead of periods for some reason.
Some phones autocorrect double spaces to period+space. He probably switched to one that didn't do that, and didn't proofread before posting.
ulyssessword
1mo 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.
It's probably innocuous, but now I'm wondering if Dragonsteel Entertainment was created as his backup plan.
For those who don't know, Dragonsteel Entertainment is Sanderson's company. It has ~60 employees, including a few of his friends and family, spread out over editorial, continuity, merchandising/publicity, and administrative roles. It has almost exclusively been for Sanderson, but he's starting to publish a couple of others as well. It was the main force behind his "Secret Project" set of novels coming out this year, so it's made at least $40 million in sales already (approx. 5% of one of the "big five" American publishers, or about 0.05% of all books everywhere).
Combine that with his opposition to Amazon's monopolistic audiobook practices, and he might become largely unCancellable. Regardless of whether it was his goal, I wish him the best of luck.
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