ulyssessword
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User ID: 308
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
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
5mo 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
14d 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
2mo 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
19hr ago
Here are some general arguments for why women are choosing bear over men, trying to not strawman to the best of my ability:
I think I can do better: The framing of the question sets it up as an obstacle, so the respondents are treating it as one. If the question was "Would you rather be stuck in the woods with a man or a guidebook to local plants?" then people would recognize it as a choice between types of assistance, and (more likely) choose the man. If the question was "Would you rather be stuck in the woods with a bear or a guidebook to local plants?" then they would just be confused because it's obviously trivial and arbitrary. If the man could help you in this hypothetical, then why are you even asking the question?
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
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
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.
ulyssessword
3mo ago
Dang. Why doesn't someone (maybe the government itself??) just do that for every single public-but-paywalled document?
Ten cents per page is a reasonable fee for an archivist digging up and photocopying some documents, but it seems wildly out of touch with the costs of hosting a pdf.
ulyssessword
6mo ago
Are you sure that's not backwards? Marxism is socially acceptable, therefore society accepts it (such as by allowing its tenets to be expressed by employees). Racism is not socially acceptable, therefore society doesn't accept it (such as by not allowing its tenets to be expressed by employees).
If you think that employees holding a specific view cause that view to become more socially acceptable, then could you expand on how/why?
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.
ulyssessword
1mo 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.
ulyssessword
7mo ago
Another one: Tim McGraw- Don't take the girl TL;DR: Don't take the girl fishing with us. Don't kidnap my girlfriend. Don't let my wife die in childbirth.
Also, tvtropes is a fantastic resource. I followed the trail from that song to the artist then to Dual Meaning Chorus which contains dozens of examples.
ulyssessword
7mo ago
(Said without any pauses)
What's the hardest part about telling a joke timing.
ulyssessword
8mo ago
In a Socialized economy, you'd all go to the town council to convince them that the plant would be a net positive for the town. The council would hold a vote of the entire town. If the vote passed, the town would fund your plant...
...
Since everyone shares in the profits of the plant...
Does everyone share in the losses as well? How good is the town's judgment?
If it's bad, do the residents become destitute after they spend their efforts on a doomed venture? If not, who is bailing them out?
If it's great, can they leverage it beyond their own borders? Would they even care to put in the effort if the benefits go to other people?
Also, that seems incredibly unstable or else totalitarian.
Imagine that someone wants to start a new business, and applies to the town. The town declines, so they decide to go it alone (Maybe it's capital-light like a sole-proprietorship hairdresser run from home. Maybe they can get money from elsewhere.) Does the town take the profits as if they had invested? If they don't, they'll be pushed into irrelevance unless they are the best judges of value in the entire market. If they do, they're hardly better than common thieves.
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.
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